By Dwight Normile
Svetlana Khorkina continues to add to her legacy-- and to the sport itself
She blows kisses to fans and blows off interviews. She laughs, cries, pouts, consoles. One minute you like her, the next you love her. But you rarely understand her. Ever since her senior world debut in 1994, Svetlana Khorkina has gradually assumed the leadership role not only for her russian team, but for the sport itself. Women's gymnastics would indeed be a bleak landscape right now without her.
It would be difficult for Khorkina to blend in anyway. At 5-foot-5 and weighing just over 100 pounds, the lanky Belgorod native is not difficult to spot at a competition. She's usually the tallest and slowest figure on the podium. In a sport of apparent hyperactivity, Khorkina goes languidly about her business. That is, until she mounts the apparatus.
Khorkina's style is one of calculated risk, forced by her seemingly frail physique. She and gravity have never been the best of friends, so Khorkina relies on precise technique and momentum to execute some of the most innovative gymnastics ever. Few of her skills stand alone; each is dependent on the previous element.
On balance beam, for example, Khokina has always been adept at linking skills. Back in '94 she used cartwheels to propel herself into a full-twisting gainer flip-flop and a layout gainer. Today, she's tossing a cartwheel to a full-twisting layout gainer!
Khorkina's work on the uneven bars is no less amazing. Half of her 14 individual medals in world championships and Olympic Games have come on bars (six gold). But she's no specialist. Khorkina has won world medals on all four events, plus the all-around (silver in '95, gold in'97). the Code of Points lists at least one skill per event that bears her name.
Ironically, the uneven bars have foiled- partially, at least- her Olympic all-around aspirations. In '96 Khorkina missed her new transition skill and finished 15th. Last year, in Sydney, her luck couldn't have been worse. After taking the first-round lead with a 9.812 on floor, Khorkina headed to vault, her riskiest event. She crashed badly on her first vault, a roundoff half-on to Rudi. Knowing a medal was out of reach, Khorkina failed to negotiate her difficult routine on bars, and fell again.
Only then came the announcement that the horse had been set wrong; everyone who had vaulted at the wrong height could vault again at the end of the meet. It was like fixing a leaky water pipe with chewing gum. To be truly fair, the FIG should also have permitted the repetition of any routine that had been performed between the faulty vault discovery and the subsequent announcement.
Khorkina's situaton was then forgotten completely amid the maelstrom that surrounded Andreea Raducan, who was stripped of the Olympic all-around title because of the cold pills she had taken. Had the vault been set right, Raducan might not have become such big news.
Truth is, Khorkina had the best chance to win the all-around in Sydney. In the preliminaries, she had led all gymnasts with 39.005, a four-event total that would go unsurpassed the entire week. To say Khorkina's fall from bars had nothing to do with her poor vault is to assume that gymnasts are indeed robots. But they are not. They are humans who compete on emotion and confidence.
"I think obviously she was very upset at the time, because you hate that 'What if?'" says Shannon Miller, a two-time world all-around champion and Olympic gold medalist. "You'd rather know. 'OK, at least the vault was set (correctly) and I totally biffed the vault and I did horrible.' Well, at least she could understand that...but it was something that was taken out of her control."
Miller got to know Khorkina after Sydney, when both performed on the T.J. Maxx tour. Asked about the flirtatious character we see on TV, Miller rounds out the image for us. "I think that's part of who she is," Miller begins. "I think part of her absolutely loves gymnastics and the part most people see, like through TV, is the competitor who wants to win and wants to show what she's learned. And that she has to overcome a lot more than some of the other athletes because of her height and that sort of thing.
"But I think the actual person she is- I mean, she just loves to have fun. She loves to enjoy life. She's very funny and she's got a great sense of humor."
Coach Mary Lee Tracy traveled with the tour too, and her assessment of Khorkina is similar. "The TV coverage of the Olympics did not show her good side," she says. "After spending time with 'Svyeta' on the tour, I found her to be someone who enjoyed life. She was interested in getting to know people, seeing the sights, testing out the nightlife. But what she was best at was shopping. No matter what time the bus whould arrive, she would ask, 'Is there a good mall in this city and what time will we be going?'"
Tracy adds that Khorkina never bought a lot, but she liked the finest stores and purchased items of the highest quality.
Less-is-more seems to be a Khorkina trademark. On her floor exercise, for example, she can mesmorize and entire arena with the slightest wave of her arm, a subtle glance of her eyes. No other gymnast can do so little yet still captivate an entire audience. Khorkina oozes charisma.
Of course, she attributes much of her success, emotional and otherwise, to her longtime coach, Boris Pilkin. She claims he is like a father, but in reality, the 72-year-old Pilkin is more like a grandfather. When he's not discovering new combinations through which to reveal Khorkina's keen ability, he uses his wisdom to handle her mood swings. In victory he is invisible, but in defeat he often takes the blame, protecting the psyche of his loyal student.
Former boyfriend Ivan Ivankov offers his take on the enigmatic Khorkina. "She is very complicated," he begins. "She can be weak when she needs some help, somebody's shoulder. But this is very rare, and she tries not to show it.
"She is a leader by nature, especially in sport. If she loses, she will be disappointed, but at the bottom of her heart, she knows she is going to win later. And when she wins, she is a queen."
Khorkina has modeled herself after other gymnastics royalty. She bacame interested in the sport when she saw on TV the effervescent Oksana Omelianchik, the 1985 co-world champion. But even at six years old, Khorkina was encouraged to try rhythmic gymnastics instead. She just wasn't built for artistic gymnastics. She tried it for a year but didn't like it.
More recently Khorkina said she admires Olga Mostepanova, Svetlana Boginskaya, Vitaly Scherbo and Alexei Nemov. In fact, she has characteristics of each; Mostepanova's technique, Boginskaya's allure, Scherbo's cockiness and Nemov's presence. "I gradually realized that the best thing in life is to build your own aura," she says.
Part of that aura is her unpredictability. Ivonkov admits that Khorkina "changes her mind very quickly," and that is her right. After the Atlanta Olympics she hedged about hanging on until 2000. In Sydney she said she did not know what she would do next. Now, at the 2001 Goodwill Games in Brisbane, Khorkina confides that Athens '04 might be in her sights. With Khorkina, it's always a guessing game.
"She's smart about gymnastics," Miller says. "She knows her body's going to handle (only) so much...She's got to do quality instead of quantity...and I think that's why she's going to hand on for so long."
Miller may have said the magic word. Khorkina's gymnastics has always been about quality. And despite the stringent new Code of Points, her routines continue to reach new levels of difficulty and artistry. Why retire at 22 when you're still capable of winning every meet you enter?
As long as Svetlana Khorkina stays healthy, so will women's gymnastics. The sport needs her. Long live the Queen.
-Dwight Normile
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