Three-time Olympic champion Alexander Dityatin talked to MatchTV about his career and what it meant to be an athlete during the Soviet times.
Q: Were you watching the last European Championships?
A: Unfortunately, I couldn’t watch it live. I’m out in the country, the internet quality isn’t the best here. I saw athletics and aquatics but didn’t manage to catch gymnastics. But I saw the recording alter. Our girls and guys won the team competitions, I also saw the event finals. It was a good performance.
Q: Are the current gymnasts the worthy heirs of your generation?
A: They’re gaining momentum. At one time there was a severe decline when Russia barely won anything. Lately, there’s been progress in the all-around and on the individual events but there’s no one behind the leaders. That’s the problem. We had a long bench of athletes who were able to compete at major competitions but now there’s emptiness behind the one-two best gymnasts. Accordingly, if the leaders aren’t competing, you might not be able to assemble a second team.
Our generation had other goals and scope. We were fighting against the invincible Japanese team which was winning the team competition at four Olympics in a row – from 1960 to 1972. They were winning the team competition at the World Championships from 1962 to 1979. The USSR was forever second. So, when I made the national team, the goal was clear: to beat the Japanese in Montreal-1976, both in the team competition and in the individual all-around.
Q: How did you manage to win?
A: Strictly speaking, we beat them already in Montreal but the judges weren’t prepared for that yet [laughs]. So it happened at the 1979 World Championships in Fort Worth when we undisputedly won the team competition and I became the all-around champion. And in the all-around final in Montreal-1976, the course of the competition was broken by the gymnast who has always been my ideal – Nikolai Andrianov. He was very clean on the apparatuses. At the time we didn’t have any videos so we could only see someone live, at competitions.
Q: Has the judging become better, more transparent since then?
A: There have always been and always will be issues in judging. It’s a subjective opinion and that’s why it will always be a reason for discussions. You can deduct differently for a tiny step on the landing. The rules are changing but the judging issues remain. Another matter is that now “a name is a name but points are points”. If an unknown athlete does a routine with high difficulty, he can beat any star. During my time, you first had to work for your name and then your name worked for you. So, for five years I was earning a name for myself while playing secondary roles. And only later my name started receiving bonuses from the judges. In Montreal, when I became fourth in the all-around, my performance was possibly better than years later when I won gold. In 1981, at the World Championships in Moscow, I had a severe ankle injury – my whole lower leg was blue and tightly taped. And in that condition, on one leg, the judges put me in second place in the all-around after the first day of the competition. And only on the second day, when they realized that I wasn’t at the level at all, they pushed me down the ranks.
Q: How did you get that injury?
A: People usually get injured while doing simple things, because of negligence. They prepare for the difficult elements, set themselves up and, as a rule, everything goes fine. But the lack of attention, the negligent attitude to simple elements are the most common reasons for injuries. One, during a floor warm-up, two gymnasts bumped into each other when they simultaneously started running from the opposite ends of the floor. Regarding my ankle – before the 1981 Worlds and teammate jumped on the trampoline while I was already there and as a result, my ankle got dislocated. I spent three days before the World Championships in bed, I didn’t train, I didn’t warm up, I did nothing. And in that condition, I went out to compete. As a result, that ankle injury cut my career short even though at that Worlds I won three gold medals: team, parallel bars, and rings.
Q: Would you be able to keep competing if not for that injury?
A: There were very strong young gymnasts at our heels. And after the Western countries didn’t come to the Games in Moscow, there was a feeling that we wouldn’t go to them to the Olympics in Los Angeles. I wasn’t sure but I had a feeling, I guessed it… And also, by that time I already won everything I could gymnastics.
Q: You are 1.8 meters tall [5″9], it’s a bit too tall for gymnastics…
A: Originally, the experts that measured me at the age of 10 or 11 said that I won’t ever be a gymnast. Then, already on the national team, other experts considered me inconsistent even though I proved the opposite at every competition. The head coach listened to those “experts” and didn’t always put me on the team. I had to prove everything through my results. At 17, I won the USSR Cup among the seniors, and before that, I killed at every junior competition. And throughout my whole career, I made the national team because of winning the national competitions. They couldn’t do anything, they had to put the winner on the national team.
Q: But couldn’t they just judge you unfairly at those competitions and not let you win?
A: We had the sport clubs behind us, CSKA, Dynamo… And if something like this happened, then the directors of Dynamo could demand an explanation from the federation and the judges. So, no serious violations happened, although there were some small things here and there.
Q: And what about the opposite – the judges didn’t notice your mistakes, your reputation worked, and you realized that the first place wasn’t yours. What did you feel?
A: Before that, for many years, I was passed by those whose mistakes weren’t noticed. This even happened at international competitions, when the Soviet judges gave me low scores and I ended up without a medal. It was very hurtful that because of the score of my teammate I’ll get a bronze instead of a silver. So, when my mistakes weren’t noticed and I got to win, I had no guilty conscience. Of course, the other competitors complained. Well, who knows what exactly happened there – perhaps a judge blinked and really didn’t notice!
Q: Did the selection for the Moscow Olympics took a lot of your energy?
A: Seven months before the Games, I won the World Championships, and then – the USSR Championships. So, I was the solid number one on the team, without any questions.
Q: Did the leadership put pressure on you?
A: You get nervous at every competition, no matter whether it’s the national championships or the Worlds. In 1976, at my first Olympics, I felt a lot of pressure, of course. Then it subsided, but still, at every competition, with every routine, I was nervous. Only an unhealthy person doesn’t get nervous, a normal person should. In Moscow-1980, the first apparatus for us was pommel horse and it’s considered the most treacherous and unpredictable, with a lot of falls. I was still nervous after the pommels but much less.
Q: When did you travel abroad for the first time?
A: I was supposed to go to Bulgaria when I was in 10th grade, for the competition called “Friendship”. But I didn’t go, the coaches decided that I was too young and I wouldn’t be able to handle the pressure of the first international competition. So, that’s why my first abroad trip happened a bit later, to Czechoslovakia.
Q: What did they gymnasts bring from abroad during those years?*
A: We almost never brought anything. Well, we did, but for us, it wasn’t a source of income, a business. Jeans, music records, whatever was in demand… We had lots of competitions with good prize money, so we didn’t really need to take the risk of smuggling something.
Q: How much was the prize money?
A: For an Olympic gold medal we got 4,000 rubles, for a Worlds gold – 1,500 rubles, for Euros, I think – 500 rubles. And 13% income tax was taken from this sum. At the Moscow News competition, we got 300 rubles for the gold. Since a gymnast could get, say, five medals at one competition, you can calculate how much money we ended up with. In 1976, there was an interesting situation with the prize money for the Games. We got 10% of the sum in a foreign currency, so we got 3,600 in rubles and another 400 rubles were given in dollars. They calculated it according to the official course, and it was about 600 dollars. But at the black market, $600 cost much more than 400 rubles.
Q: Many say that having a personality that’s good for sports isn’t the best bonus for family life. You are twice divorced. What were the reasons?
A: It’s not about the personality on its own but the discrepancy between it and the personality of the second person. Of course, athletes can be a bit difficult, they live in the world of structure, diet, goals, and tasks. But if the second person accepts it, everything will be fine.
*At the time, most Soviet people weren’t allowed to go abroad, and those few lucky ones that were, usually did some small-time smuggling – they brought some stuff from USSR to sell (like vodka or caviar), and with the money they got, bought foreign goods (like clothes, music records, and electronics) to sell in the Soviet black market for several times the price…
Photo: RIA Novosti
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