I’ve a big purple poster on my wall at residence – I find it irresistible. So that you can get an thought, it measures about 3 ft excessive by 2 ft throughout. It is brilliant purple with a hanging graphic picture, a poster for a movie. The movie’s title and particulars are written in Spanish, and the graphic is of a woman with pigtails performing a one-armed handstand on a steadiness beam.
The poster is a historic file of the Soviet Union’s coverage to make use of sport as a political affect, and on this case specifically to forge diplomatic relations with part of the world that was crucial to them from a strategic defence place – Cuba. This movie, ‘Maravilla Con Trenzas Largas’ or ‘Miracle with Pigtails’ was a Russian language, Soviet produced movie primarily based on the aggressive profession of Olga Korbut. The poster information the 1977 launch of the movie in Cuba. This was inside 15 years of the Cuban Missile Disaster, when the USSR and USA locked horns and the world was inside a purple button or two of nuclear holocaust.
The graphic reveals Olga’s distinctive pigtails, however the talent it depicts is definitely Natalia Shaposhnikova’s one armed handstand right into a planche, which was the newest gymnastics sensation in 1977. The gymnast’s hair is blonde; Olga’s hair was brown on the 1972 Olympics, proper by means of until 1976, after which she retired, (For some purpose, Olga is usually depicted and described as blonde in accounts of her exploits. It would not actually matter, however I am unable to think about a movie about Dmitri Bilozerchev or Valeri Borzov abruptly altering a element of their bodily look. Korbut’s hair was blonde when she was a baby however grew darker as she matured. It is a feminist matter of the illustration of feminine athletes within the media; to be an athlete, you have to be glamourous and to be glamourous it’s a must to have blond hair. Pigtails infantilize a girl; she will be able to’t be a girl when she’s in thrall to her highly effective, controlling coach and portrays youngster like actions, even when she is liable to breaking her neck within the course of. The pigtails simply emphasise her submissive, inferior place to the Svengali determine, the male coach. Nonetheless, she should have blonde hair, with a purpose to fulfill our thought of females as basically there for the best way they appear.)
Knysh argued that Korbut’s nice improvements – the tuck again somersault on the beam, the Korbut loop on the bars, the bars dismount from the identical root transfer, numerous strikes in her flooring workouts – all stemmed from the heritage of gymnastics. They have been nothing new, merely actions that gymnastics hadn’t seen for a very long time, they regarded rather a lot completely different to what individuals have been used to, and so the judges and coaches and followers have been stunned and shocked by them. Korbut’s massive technical contribution was the total on handspring vault – there have been actual technical and biomechanical points that meant that this vault was subsequent to inconceivable.
In her autobiography Korbut talks at size of the challenges of overcoming resistance to accepting her radical strikes into the battery of the game, and the movie does a superb job of recording these historic struggles. The Soviet institution have been sluggish to recognise her contributions (though that is performed down within the movie, which prefers to emphasize the theme of Soviet Union versus the Western world that we see echoed so usually right now within the creating historical past of Russia); and the FIG threatened numerous deductions, however in the long run largely accepted and rewarded the strikes. On the 1974 Varna World Championships, which Korbut considers to have been her finest competitors, she gained gold for her controversial vault; this victory is recorded within the movie. The dramatic scenes are intercut with video of the particular competitions. For its period, that is nicely dealt with technically.
As for Cuba, the discharge of the movie (which, so far as I do know has by no means been made obtainable within the English language) was a part of a programme of diplomatic help supplied to the Cuban gymnastics programme. Soviet coaches labored with the workforce, and so they tried to inject a spirit of journey and innovation into their programme. Casimiro Suarez, a excessive bar specialist and noteworthy tumbler, competed for Cuba on the 1980 Olympics the place he certified to the excessive bar ultimate; his final worldwide look was on the Pan American Video games in 1991, the place he completed second on vault, and he now works as a coach within the USA. His compatriot Jorge Cuervo competed on the 1972 Olympics and created the handspring half, again salto vault that’s nonetheless named to him within the Code of Factors.
Did any of you see the movie when it was launched in Cuba? I might have an interest to listen to your reminiscences.
Miracle in Pigtails is only one Soviet language movie that information among the historical past of Soviet gymnastics; these movies are popping up on Youtube on a regular basis.
