Sovetskaya Moldaviya. July 15, 1983. Among the members of the Soviet delegation at the IV Festival of Friendship between the youth of the USSR and Finland, a familiar face attracted attention - stubborn, focused, but miraculously blossoming with the first, slightly mischievous smile. We had seen this girl many times on television screens. Masha Filatova! Two-time Olympic champion in gymnastics in the team competition. At sixteen years old, she was already a Merited Master of Sports.
Filatova is now a veteran. She left competitive sports two years ago. At 23 (Masha will soon turn that age), it's time to think about the future and choose a profession. Filatova made her choice - gymnastics. Only now, after graduating from the Institute of Physical Culture in Minsk, where she is currently studying, she will become a coach, a coach-choreographer.
"I owe a great deal to my choreographers. It was they who, at the time, recognized in me the qualities of playfulness, spontaneity, and the ability to freely improvise. They grasped these qualities and embodied them in precisely chosen elements of the exercises. That's how my style was born, which was later referred to as the 'Filatova style.' It truly became my own."
Do you remember the 'Spanish' floor exercises?
"This wonderful idea was created for me by my choreographer Lilia Sokolova. I want to give such 'miracles' to my children. To those children who will soon the discover the gymnastics of the twenty-first century - fast-paced, complex, filled with the riskiest elements, but I hope, and this will be my task, open to emotions, capable of exciting and captivating..."
Q: Masha, we remember your last performance on the international stage - the 1981 world championships in Moscow. Back then, those who liked to make predictions wondered who would win: Filatova, or the all-around champion of the Moscow Olympic Elena Davydova, or the all-around European champion Maxi Gnauck from East Germany? You were the most experienced, they were the most decorated. But the winner was... a completely unknown debutante, a schoolgirl - Olya Bicherova. How did that happen?
A: Remember, I'm a two-time Olympic champion in the team competition. In team competitions! In Moscow, we also became world champions. And yet, our team at that championships had many newcomers. That's why I, the most experienced one, was entrusted with performing first on each apparatus, as the 'table setter," as we say. And the first performer always gets a slightly lower score from the judges; they 'save' the higher scores for later performances. Olya Bicherova overtook me in the first two days of the individual competition, as the individual and team competitions were held simultaneously. But I still made it to the final, which is an exceptional achievement for a table setter. However, catching up with Olya who, having calmed down, truly believed in her capabilities and was 'on fire,' proved to be a hopeless task.
Later, Bicherova won both the World Cup and the European all-around championship. Now Olya is 15 years old, and she already holds all the titles except the Olympic ones... But her Olympics are still ahead of her. And I'm happy that, even though I didn't becomne the all-around world champion myself, I contributed in some way to the emergence of a new star of Russian gymnastics.
Q: I would like to know your opinion about the IV Festival of Youth from the USSR and Finland?
A: The festival once again demonstrated that people from countries with different social systems can be friends and cooperate. I have had the opportunity to compete in various countries, including the USA. I helped train American gymnasts who came to us for internships. Ordinary people across the ocean greeted us in a friendly manner. It's true that sport is an ambassador of peace. And I am glad that I chose sport as my life's work, because it united people's hearts.
"And, also, please tell your newspaper's readers: I really liked Moldova," Masha Filatova said at the end of our conversation."Your compatriot Stella Zakharova, with whom I competed on the Soviet national team, told me a lot about it. But I couldn't even imagine how green, sunny, and beautiful it is."
A. POPOV