Sovetsky Sport. April 3, 1972. Special correspondent of Sovetsky Sport G. Borisov asked the deputy chief judge of the championship, international-category judge and Merited Master of Sports P. G. Astakhova to comment on the women's competition in the compulsory program. Here's what she said:
"Readers of your newspaper probably know that some time ago the International Gymnastics Federation granted national federations the right, within certain norms and requirements, to independendly compose compulsory exercises for the Olympic tournament - floor exercise, balance beamn, and to some extent the uneven bars. The importance of this innovation cannot be overestimated. Each country got the opportunity to fully demonstrate the level of its female gymnastics, the best aspects of their national school."
"According to this new compulsory program, our gymnasts competed it for the first time at the USSR Spartakiad, and then, in the process of training and competing, they continued to improve its performance. Will our women's compulsory program 'make noise' at the Olympics? It's still difficult to talk about this. Our team has competed in too few international competitions - only three. But, for example, after the match between Hungary and the USSR, foreign judges spoke very favorably about our gymnasts' compulsory exercises."
"But let's to back to today. If we compare the performance of the exercises of the women's compulsory program at the USSR Spartakiad and now, in Kiev, then in my opinion our strongest gymnasts have undoubtedly made a serious step forward. And they began to perform much stronger. Who exactly? Just the same Turischeva. Her failure on the balance beam is not indicative. No one is safe from such accidents, and here was her duel with Lazakovich, which has become almost traditional since the European Cup. No wonder Lyudmila got a little nervous. By the way, her opponent also performed stiffly on the beam. And also received a low score. Obviously for the same reason. The other candidates for the Olympic team also had failures: Korbut touchd the mat with her feet while hanging on the bar, Burda accidentally jumped off the bars, etc. I think, however, that the quality of the performance of compulsory exercises by our strongest gymnasts as a whole is not determined by these individual messes and roughness. These failures are drowned in a quite favorable general impression.