Sovetsky Sport. March 6, 1976. Tbilisi, March 5 (our special correspondent). The 42nd USSR individual and team championship in gymnastics has named its first laureates. In the women's competition among teams of societies and departments, the Dinamo 1 team won. Gold medals were awarded to E. Saadi, L. Builova, M. Lev, S. Kudinova, L. Yudina, and N. Shaposhnikova. The silver was awarded to the gymnasts of Burevestnik, and the bronze was awarded to Spartak.
E. Saadi is leading in the individual standings before the all-around final. At first, it seemed that the Dinamo team, breaking away from their competitors in the compulsory program by almost two points, would easily come to the finish line with a good reserve of strength. But the team competition is always full of surprises. Although there were quite a lot of falls in the optional program by all teams, the gymnasts of the student society [Burevestnik] reduced the gap, step by step. After the second rotation they lagged behind by 0.65 points, and after the third by only 0.25 points. Of course, Elvira Saadi, the captain, each time made a tangible contribution in the form of high scores to the treasury of her team, but without the support of her teammates she, of course, could not have done anything.
Here, much depended on the performance of the eighth-grader from Rostov-on-Don, Natasha Shaposhnikova. Perhaps the smallest (in terms of height) participant in the championship, the debutant of the adult platform Natasha, a student of coach Vladislav Rastorotsky, made a good impression. Although she didn't have the most dificult program, and not the best quality of performance so far, Shaposhnikova has talent and character. We have no doubt that we in Tbilisi witnessed the birth of another very promising gymnast.
Svetlana Grozdova from Rostov received a score of 10.8 points for her beam exercise. No, don't worry about a typo. She got exactly 10.8! We have already said taht, as an experiment, inorder to encourage the performance of particularly complex and original elements, a special table of allowances has been introduced for women, with the help of which the judge on the apparatus can add a certain number of tenths to the usual score. So, Grozdova's exercise contained so many difficult and unusual combinations that in the end we got an amazing score. It was a miracle, magic. We can safely say that the gymnastics world has never seen anything like it before. Coach R. Lavrov created a unique composition, where every movement of his student sparkled with new facets, polished to an amazing brilliance. No words can convey the feelings that you experienced while viewing this short performance. Yes, you should have seen it!
Here is another reason why the Burevestnik gymnasts so quickly caught up with the Dinamo team. Masha Filatova (Leninsk-Kuznetsk) performed on their team and in her program are tricks of record difficulty. So, for floor exercises, she was awarded a score of 10.05 points. Other athletes also had scores approachiing 10. It is clear that only the difficulty allowed the same M. Filatova to move from 11th place in the compulsory program to fifth in the optional program. And in the all-around finals, it will probably rise (if there are no obvious breakdowns) even higher.
In this experiment, I want to say the following. It is certainly not prepared, and is vulnerable in some positions. However, it is necessary to stimulate our women's gymnastics to approach new levels of difficulty in one way or another. The only question is whether it was worth experimenting in the Olympic year, increasing the nervousness of the already difficult and nervous process of selecting candidates for a trip to Montreal. Moreover, the results of the experiment should, in theory, affect mainly those who are preparing for the next Olympics.
TECHNICAL RESULTS
Women. Compulsory and optional program (optional scores are in brackets). 1. E. Saadi (Dinamo) - 76.25 (9.5, 9.65, 9.4, 9.7); 2. O. Koval (Zenit) - 75.95 (9.4, 9.8, 9.65, 9.8); 3. S. Grozdova (Army) - 75.8 (9.1, 9.7, 10.8, 9.5) and N. Kim (Spartak) - 75.8 (9.45, 9.8, 9.8, 9.45); 5. M. Filatova (Burevestnik) - 75.65; 6. E. Primak (Burevestnik) - 74.6.
Team results. 1. Dinamo 1 - 372.9; 2. Burevestnik 1 - 372.2; 3. Spartak - 367.85; 4. Army - 367.75; 5. Zenit - 363.75; 6. Trud - 362.35.
A. AKOPOV V. GOLUBEV