Sovetsky Sport. January 5, 1990. Everyone knows her as a great gymnast - no one else has still ever won nine Olympic gold medals.
She was known as the head coach of the national team. How many stars have flashed under her leadership - it's blinding. Here are Natalia Kuchinskaya, and Larisa Petrik, and Lyudmila Turischeva, and Olga Korbut, and Nelli Kim, and Maria Filatova.
Then her footprints were not so much lost, but they remembered her only as a nine-time medalist and unique, casually mentioning that now Larisa Semyonovna Latynina is the senior coach of the Moscow national team. By the way, for some reason, they never said that during this time in Moscow. Olga Bicherova, Olga Mostepanova, Elena Gurova, and Elena Shevchenko grew into great gymnasts. She, as the head of the capital's women's gymnastics, has a direct connection to this.
Larisa Semyonovna, the work of the senior coach of the USSR national team is in the spotlight. But what does the city's senior coach do?
It's incessant work. We have now finished watching all the gymnasts from Moscow, from the smallest to the most distinguished masters of sports. In total, about 700 people came to the platform. We need this, firstly, in order to know our reserves, and secondly, we have planned a very interesting experiment.
I think it's no secret that sports school coaches receieve literally pittance salaries. Naturally, they begin to look for higher-paying jobs. Many go to cooperatives, where they tutor children of kindergarten age for a fee. Everything would be nice, because the sooner the child starts doing physical education, the better. But we just starting losing specialists.
So, we need to get them back somehow.
True, but for this you need to get people interested. That's why an experiment is being done. Coaches will receive an addtional payment for each student who improves their rank at the city competition. The higher the average skill of the group, the higher the coach's payment.
Isn't this dangerous? Wouldn't this lead to the pursuit of points, that is, super-difficulty, to the detriment of systematic training and the beauty of gymnastics?
No, there should be no return to the past. We should be protected from this danger by another criterion of material incentives - the compilation of lists of the best gymnasts of the city at each rank level. The inclusion on such a symbolic team is an additional incentive for the coach.
And one more thing. To ensure that children's coaches are interested in their work and don't fear sharing 'their' children with colleagues who can bring them to a certain skill level, we decided that the first coach will receive a bonus for each newcomer he coaches.
Beauty was highly valued at the time you competed...
I value it no less even now. Two years ago, when I saw Svetlana Boginskaya for the first time, I immediately said that she should be a part of the team that was going to Rotterdam for the world championship. But then the question was being decided who would be on the team - Minsk resident Boginskaya or our Moscow gymnast Elena Shevchenko. Many people didn't understand me when Svetlana was nominated by me.
Yes, you could never be accused of 'regional' patriotism. Apparently, the years of work in the national team have had their effect. By the way, you took charge of the national team a year after your retirement from big sports. I can imagine how much skeptical gossip this caused...
I didn't hear any particular gossip, but I would assume that there was some. I still would! I, a recently-retired athlete, had to manage such coaches as Eduard Shtukman, Vikenty Dmitriev, Vladimir Reison. But unexpectedly, for myself, I felt the support of these luminaries. Shtukman, during conflicts with Lyuba Burda, always turned to me for help, for example. And I talked for a long time with either Lyuba or with Shtukman himself, and always found a 'happy medium.'
In addition, I always consulted with my colleagues. To the point where we determined the composition of the team together by secret ballot. Precisely secret, so that nothing could influence the coaches.
You understand, I left the sport not as a girl but as a grown-up mature person, I knew gymnastics thoroughly and loved it. But there was also something in it that irritated me, for example, extreme subjectivity. When I became the senior coach of the national team, I tried to reduce bad things to a minimum. This is where more experienced coaches supported me.
How did the girls react to you? After all, some of them - Natalia Kuchinskaya, Larisa Petrik, Zinaida Druzhinina - were on the same team with you. Did they perceive you as a teammate who had changed her status?
No. The thing is that Polina Astakhova and I were the last veterans to leave. Therefore, for both Larisa and Natasha, who were very young at that time, they were not my friends. They called us 'Polina Grigorievna' and 'Larisa Semyonovna,' and tried, even when we were still competing together, to learn from us. One day Natasha Kuchinskaya and I went to an exhibition together, and afterwards we were in the same hotel room. I got up early in the morning and started tidying up. Natasha was still lying in bed and silently watched me. And then suddenly she says: "You know, Larisa Semyonovna, I used to think that I would never wear makeup, but now I want to learn from you." No, I was too old for them to seem like a friend.
Were there any favorites on the team?
How can I say this. Many people tried to blame me for this. It wasn't that there were favorites, there were girls whom I especially valued because of their talent. In general, I really love gymnasts who have that special spark of talent. Remember Nina Dronova? She had almost no conditions for training in Georgia, but she still shone like a diamond. She was the only one I really wanted to keep for the team. And if she hadn't eaten that damned sausage, if she hadn't been poisoned before the 1972 Olympics in Munich, maybe her name would have sounded loudly. It's too bad, really a pity, that it didn't work out.
And Olya Korbut. How many times have I been accused of indulging her whims and only taking her on trips that she wanted to go on? And I understood that the girl gave so much of her best at competitions that if I forced her to go on an exhibition tour, she would have simply gone to pieces.
But the personalities of these stars turned out to be far from pleasant...
But I don't really believe that talent can have an easy character. Although, to be honest, I tried to 'ground' the girls to some extent. Once, I think in 1976, there was a commercial for the upcoming Moscow Olympics. Korbut and Turischeva took part in it. Korbut was wearing an exhibition sample of a fur coat, which was then to be taken to some auction abroad. But Olga wanted to buy this fur coat. She, and I, when I began to ask for her, were refused. Then she went to the then chairman of the Sports Committee, Pavlov. He resolved this issue with one phone call. Then Lyuda Turischeva, through Pavlov, got herself some incredible curtains. I tried to explain to them both that it was not good to rush to the minister because of such things. But they didn't understand me. And now...it's scary to admit, but I began to think: maybe I was an idealist, maybe they're right? Maybe our time had already passed back then, and their time had arrived, the time of the young and ambitious? I don't know, but my educational speeches were of no use to them. They had achieved everything on their own, both good and bad.
But I can't believe that gymnastics is all about the stars. How many are there from 1952 to the present day? Maybe twelve, maybe a little more. And what is called a gymnastics school was created by thousands of masters of sports, hundreds of unknown 'table setters'?
Maybe you're right. I'm talking about those with whom I liked to work with more. By the way, not all world champions are outstanding talents. There are also those who achieved everything solely through their own work and the work of the coach.
Larisa Semyonovna, how could it happen that from the senior coach of the USSR national team you went to work as the senior coach of the Moscow national team?
When Romania found a gymnast, Nadia Comaneci, who was unique in her natural abilities, it was decided that the head coach of the USSR national team was to blame. I left. Even though we did not lose a single Olympic or a single world championship while I was coaching the team. I was then invited to work on the Organizing Committee of the 1980 Olympics, and when it was dissolved after the Moscow Games, they could not offer me any work that would meet my capabilities. I contacted the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] Central Committee, and they sent me to the Moscow Sports Committee. But I have never missed a single more or less major gymnastics competition. This is my life. I was also at the 1979 world championships in Fort Worth, but I only saw the podium training.
(The voice of the 'unbending' Latynina trembles, and for a moment I regretted that I had made Larisa Semyonovna remember this incident when she - a nine-time Olympic champion, a legend of Soviet gymnastics, coach of a team that for ten years made the arenas freeze under the anthem of the Soviet Union - was simply thrown out of the world championship. And she just asked to be allowed to go to Fort Worth for the competition after a report to the FIG about Moscow's readiness for the Olympic tournament. What on earth was going to happen if they didn't even spare Latynina herself!)
Are you happy with your work now?
Yes. I deal with a lot of people. They come to me with all kinds of problems, even family problems. How can I not help? And if you talk to them in a womanly way, they feel better and start working with renewed vigor. They suggested that I run for deputy of the Moscow Council, but I refused because I didn't have enough economic and legal knowledge. I don't want to look unprofessional. There's a lot of work on the experiment I told you about. As with any new business, not everything has been worked out yet. And so we need to help the coaches! In general, you can't redo all the work.
The next day was very important for Latynina: the USSR State Sports Committee approved the lists of the new team. Moscow Dinamo Tatiana Groshkova, a student of Elvira Saadi, was vying for one of the places. The same Saadi who once shone in the team coached by Larisa Semyonovna.
N. KALUGINA