Pionerskaya Pravda. November 10, 1981. The head judge approached the console, pressed the keys, and the numbers 9.85 flashed onto the scoreboard - Nadia Comaneci's score for her performance on the balance beam. This meant that nineteen-year-old Elena Davydova - a student at the Lesgaft Institute of Physical Culture in Leningrad - had earned a higher total score and become the all-around champion of the 1980 Games! Her teammates from the Soviet national squad embraced Lena, while she simultaneously laughed and wept.
Lena had dreamed of this victory for twelve years - ever since the day, as a seven-year-old girl, she first crossed the threshold of the famous gymnastics school in her hometown of Voronezh. At the time, the talented coach Yuri Shtukman worked there, and the Olympic champion Lyubov Burda was regarded as the universal favorite - the very epitome of a gymnast. Fragile, toned, and slender, she seemed to Lena to possess an unattainable beauty. Lena herself, however, was as round as a doughnut back then. It came as no surprise that she was not accepted into the school. They told her: "She has no potential..." Another girl in her place might have taken offense and walked away, but Lena stayed. She would secretly watch what the coaches were teaching the more gifted girls, and then, out in the school courtyard, she would practice the exercises she had observed.
"I told all the girls in the courtyard that I was going to sign up for gymnastics, and I probably would have died of shame if I'd had to admit that they hadn't accepted me."
This small episode revealed one of the defining traits of Lena's character: if she ever boasted about something or made a promise - even if only by accident or out of carelessness - she would move heaven and earth to ensure she fulfilled her intention. When, on the eve of the 1980 Olympics, the national team coaches asked Davydova point-black whether she would let the team down, Lena replied firlmy: "I won't!"
It's hard to say how young Davydova's solitary quest to break into gymnastics would have ended had a young coach, Gennady Korshunov, not one day spotted her performing her peculiar training drills in a courtyard. Struck by the girl's tenacity, he persuaded Yuri Shtukman to admit Lena to the sports school. At first, they struggled to make any headway. Yet Lena would never have forgiten herself for letting down the coach who had vouched for her; consequently, she worked with such fervor and determination that Korshunov sometimes had to physically force her out of the gym. Her diligence was duly rewarded: in 1976, Davydova won a major silver medal at the USSR Championships, and gymnastics experts began to take notice.
Then followed years of setbacks. Davydova was surpassed not only by her peers but also by younger gymnasts. While they were winning medals at major international competitions, Elena and her coach were agonizingly searching for the reasons behind her constant failures. Finally, they realized the root of the problem: the coach had been shielding his protege far too closely. They had grown accustomed to competing with one eye on other, more renowned gymnasts - a habit that often caused them to 'burn out' before the competition had even begun. They made a decision: Lena had to fight her own battles, ignore her rivals, and stay true to her own style of gymnastics. On that Olympic evening at Luzhniki, Korshunov deliberately took a seat high up in the stands so that Elena would not look to him for support, but would instead find the inner strength to prepare for the fight entirely on her own.
"It seems to me that the first step toward independence is iron self-discipline," says Davydova.
Lena is going through a very difficult time right now. The training sessions are grueling - the athletes have already begun preparing for the 1984 Olympics. Yet it never once crossed her mind to ask her coach or instructors for any special concessions, or to decline her Komsomol assignments. "One must not shy away from difficulties, for it is precisely they that forge one's character and make life rich and intersting. Where things are easy, there is no interest..." said Lena.
Do not imagine that Elena Davydova is a withdrawn, 'iron-willed' person - someone unapproachable. She knows how to have a very good time. In her spare moments, Lena hops on her favorite motorcycle and, with enviable dash, races along the country roads outside Leningrad. The champion believes that such cross-country rides foster courage and daring. She also happens to love fishing. Immediately after the Olympics, Lena traveled to a village near Voronezh to visit her grandmother, Feniya. She headed out to the local reservoir and, in a single day, caught three pike!
I. SERGEYEV