Sovetsky Sport. August 12, 1981. A warm southern breeze... It's evening, and we are sitting on the rocky shore of the Black Sea - Rusiko Sikharulidze and I. She is a former gymnast, a teammate from the USSR national squad, and now the director of a sports school in Batumi. The cold shimmer of the stars, the rhythmic murmur of the incoming waves - everything is just as it used to be, back when we trained right here in Leselidze, preparing for our most crucial competitions: the World Championships and the Olympic Games. We have returned once again to these familiar places: I am here to relax, while Rusiko is here to work as a choreographer with the Georgian national team. In the evenings she is free, and we lose ourselves in memories - memories that have surged over us quite unbidden.
Sikharulidze, a world team champion and a superb floor exercise performer, has retained her passion for this discipline of artistic gymnastics; she now devotes herself enthusiastically to choreographing routines, striving to pass on her experience and mastery to the new generation.
"You know," says Rusiko, "sometimes it saddens me to realize that not all gymnasts and coaches are willing to grasp the importance of an emotionally and choreographically sound execution of floor exercises. The gymnasts perform them solely for the sake of the acrobatics; there is simply no time left to refine the simpler movements or to cultivate expressiveness. In the main squad, however, some of the girls do try to carry on our traditions," she adds with a smile.
This fleeting remark prompted me to take a closer look at Elena Naimushina - a highly emotional gymnast who had become an Olympic champion in Moscow alongside her teammates. At that very time, Lena and the other athletes happened to be in Leselidze.
...I recall her performance of the compulsory floor exercises - a routine where it is notoriously difficult to find anything truly personal or unique. Yet Naimushina managed to do just that. During the Olympic Games, Lena was tasked with opening the Soviet team's performances in the floor exercise event. It is no secret that, due to certain unwritten laws of gymnastics judging, the first athlete to compete for a team invariably receives a lower score. But Naimushina executed every requirement with such precision and grace - and infused the seemingly simple structure of the compulsory program with such charm and allure, uniquely her own - that the judges were left in a quandry: they simply had to award the gymnast a top score! Her mark was 9.85. Which was still fantastic!
A similar situation unfolded on the second day of the team competition. Naimushina, performing first, received a score of 9.95 for her floor exercise, an unprecedented occurrence in the world of gymnastics!
But all that is in the past. The present is here - in the gymnastics hall of the village of Leselidze - where Elena Naimushina, alongside her friend Alla Misnik and the other contenders for the 1981 World Championship team, was preparing for her upcoming competitions. The next Olympic cycle had begun; it was time to master a new compulsory program and discover her own style.
What is the secret behind Naimushina's own mastery? Is it her natural charm and the fluidity of her movements? Perhaps - that, too. But Lena knows full well: the work itself fears the master.
I watch as the gymnast once again springs onto the beam - for the umpteenth time! - to perform her routine. Every movement of her arms, every turn of her head is honed until, as Lena herself puts it, "the beam obligingly appears beneath my feet after a cascade of acrobatic moves or simply a broad leap."
"Naimushina entered the world of elite gymnastics through choreography," observed Liliya Nikolaevna Sokolova, the choreographer for the USSR national team, who worked with Lena for nearly five years. She is deeply convinced that this gymnast is now prepared to masterfully perform floor exercises in any style - be it modern, folk, or classical.
Indeed, Elena Naimushina is one of the few athletes who can perform three pieces simultaneously. Her repertoire includes the Kalinka routine, a lyrical composition based on the tunes of Paul Mauriat, and another floor routine that she and Liliya Nikolaevna called Hey, Let's Go.
Naimushina performs each composition with intense emotional fervor; the gymnast conveys every nuance of the music and mood with great sublety, transitioning - without any visible effort - into the most difficult acrobatic leaps, and conveying to the audience the core concept of the routine through minute details (down to the very flutter of an eyelash, as Liliya Sokolova demands).
"I really love the floor exercises," says Lena. As she speaks, her eyes light up with a soft, cornflower-blue glow. Involuntarily, I recall those very same eyes - moist and wide open - straining to hold back the tears that were threatening to break free. This was during the European Championships earlier this spring, when Naiushina - who had not yet fully recovered from an injury - was forced to remain on the sidelines as a reserve. Lena faced this difficult situation with great fortitude, serving as a steadfast source of support for her teammates competing in the event: Alla Misnik, Natasha Ilienko, and Olga Bicherova. Perhaps it was then that her friendship with Alla Misnik was truly forged - a bond such that any separation from her, however brief, leaves Elena Naimushina with a profound sense of loss, as if she has been deprived of something absolutely essential.
...When she was just a little six-year-old girl, Lena's parents enrolled her in gymnastics - acting on doctors' advice - in an effort to cure a congenital heart defect. Not only did Lena completely overcome her illness but, with the help of her coach Valentin Shevchuk, she also managed to surpass more than a hundred other young gymnasts who had joined the club alongside her. Now older - and having already established herself on the world stage - Elena Naimushins, a tenth-grade student from Krasnoyarsk and a Merited Master of Sports, is preparing for the upcoming World Championships in Moscow this November. Ahead lies a whole series of competitions, bringing with them the possibility of both victories and defeats - for sport is sport. Yet Elena has but one goal: to remain the person that hard work has forged her to be, to preserve all that nature has bestowed upon her, and to bring joyto people through her gymnastics.
O. KOVALENKO, Merited Master of Sports