Sovetsky Sport. March 25, 1995. We probably forgot a little that Mikhail Voronin was named the best athlete of the USSR in 1966. This is because the incredibly elegant and incredibly young Dinamo competitor became the all-around world champion, twisting the tail of the famous Japanese!
He competed in two Olympic Games (Munich and Mexico City) and served as a reserve in Tokyo. Since then, Lieutenant Colonel (Reserve) Voronin has held the title of two-time Olympic champion. For a decade, he was one of the most popular athletes in the Soviet Union and the world. A delegate to Komsomol congresses and a participant in major official gatherings, he seemed destined to rise to the position of Chairman of the Central Council of his home club, Dinamo, or even Minister of Sports. He chose a more modest path: serving as head coach of the Dinamo society, and now acting as president of the gymnastics club. And he is only fifty!
Q: Which of your awards do you cherish the most?
A: The Olympic gold medals, of course.
Q: And what do you value more than Olympic gold?
A: Figuratively speaking, higher than the Olympic gold for me is the Order of Lenin and the Dinamo sports society. This is the home in which I grew up as an athlete, as a leader, as a person, perhaps even as a citizen. Today, Dinamo, like all Russian sports, is going through its bitter days due to insufficient financial support. Naturally, this affects me personally. I am now concerned about a lot of problems related to the further development of Dinamo and Russian gymnastics.
Q: Those crowning moments you experienced back then, when you stepped onto the Olympic podium... What lies behind them?
A: Behind these crowning moments lies immense hard work, and not just my own. As an Olympic champion, I was molded by a whole host of talented coaches. There were seven of them in total, though Vitaly Alexandrovich Belyaev and Yevgeny Viktorovich Korolkov certainly invested the most effort in me. Belyaev guided me to the title of USSR champion, while Korolkov - who trained a dozen Masters of Sport, including Volodya Belyshev and Vladimir Golubev (my friend and your colleague) - headed our Dinamo squad and later the national team. It was with him that I experienced the thrill of great victories. Like sculptors shaping a lump of clay, these men molded a new breed of gymnast and created a truly unique style of gymnastics. I ventured down an uncharted path in the sport, adopting a new style. It was precisely this that enabled me to win nine Olympic medals - two gold, six silver, and one bronze - which remain a source of pride for our gymnastics to this day.
Q: What exactly did this new style manifest as?
A: At that time, our gymnastics traditions were rooted in a style that emphasized strength - exemplified by athletes like Boris Shakhlin and Albert Azaryan, who were tall, powerful, and muscular. It fell to me, however, to make the gymnastics of the 1960s and 1970s, for lack of a better word, airy and elegant. Without wishing to boast, I can say that magnificent gymnasts who shared my stylistic approach emerged after me: Alexander Dityatin, Nikolai Andrianov, Alexander Tkachev, and Dmitry Bilozerchev. In short, I sought to infuse the power-oriented gymnastics tradition with the clean lines of elegance.
Q: What was the most difficult moment in your sports career?
A: The most dramatic moment for me was my performance at the 1968 Olympic Games, when - in the span of just five seconds, a mere five seconds! - I let the title of all-around Olympic champion slip away.
At that point, everyone considered me the frontrunner. I stepped up to the final apparatus. I was performing my routine on the pommel horse when, horror of horrors, my hand accidentally snagged on my gymnastics trousers. I scored only 9.5. In principle, that should have been enough; I had a bit of a cushion. Sergei Pavlovich Pavlov, the Chairman of the USSR Sports Committee, came over to congratulate me on winning the all-around title. My main rival, Sawao Kato, was competing on floor exercise. To become the all-around champion, he needed a 9.9; only then could he beat me. He wasn't prepared for such a brilliant performance at the time. Moreover, the judge for the floor exercise was Valentin Muratov, our celebrated gymnast and the head coach of the USSR national team. It seemed like a done deal; the matter was settled. My rival finished his routine. And suddenly, a 9.9 appeared on the scoreboard - that fateful score that knocked me down to second place in the all-around standings!
I don't know how long it took me to recover from the shock. I recall losing four kilograms that night. The next day brought the individual event finals. I managed to pull myself together mentally, however, and went on to win two gold and three silver Olympic medals.
Q: Many great athletes haven't had successful personal lives. What about you?
A: I am no exception in this regard. I would rather not go into details, but my personal life didn't work out either. It has been 22 years since I divorced my first wife - the wonderful athlete, outstanding gymnast, and Olympic champion Zinaida Voronina - yet the bitterness remains to this day. I cannot say that everything about our family life was bad; there were many happy moments, too. That marriage gave me a wonderful son, Dmitry. He recently turned 25. We are kindred spirits; he is a Master of Sports in gymnastics and works as a coach in my sports club. In short, I have plenty of pleasant memories from that marriage. But what can you do - that's life.
I am now married for the second time. I am content, even happy. Incidentally, my second wife has absolutely nothing to do with sports.
Q: What would you like to erase from your life?
A: There are perhaps two points. The first is the long period of decline in Soviet and Russian sports associated with perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union. And the second: I would erase from my life those unpleasant moments I once caused the fans due to my poor performances.
Q: And what would you wish for our current Olympians?
A: To the athletes currently active - who are also undergoing a period of transition, albeit it in a rather peculiar way - I would wish for just one thing: that they do not forget the glorious traditions established by a whole constellation of gymnasts, starting wtih the 1952 Olympics. Young Olympians must always remember that, on the global stage, they represent a great Russia.
These are challenging times. Our current victories, including those at the Barcelona Olympics, are still rooted in the legacy of the past; they are the welcome echoes of the sports system that existed in our country for so many years. There was a time when we reaped a bountiful harvest of Olympic medals in the field of Soviet sports. But any field requires fertilizer. Today, unfortunately, that financial nourishment is missing. Our sporting landscape is depleted; it is, alas, in decline. Yet, I firmly believe in its revival!
L. BORODINA, Master of Sports