Sprite Fight

By Jill Smolowe

Olga. Nadia. Mary Lou. Their first names alone are the way we remember them, the last names seemingly too tedious and weighty for ones so petite. Olga Korbut was the scrawny, pig-tailed brunet at the 1972 Munich Games who, with her double-jointed contortions and infectious grin, convinced us that human hearts beat within the bodies of robotic Soviet athletes. Four years later at the Montreal Games, it was a long-limbed brooding Rumanian, Nadia Comaneci, who stole hearts by posting the first perfect 10s ever in Olympic gymnastics competition. Then in Los Angeles in 1984, American Mary Lou Retton bounced + into our living rooms with her big vault and still bigger smile, assuring her place in the pantheon of gymnastics greats and on boxes of Wheaties.

Come the Summer Games, as sure as there will be botched routines and disputed scores, it is a fair bet that an agile sprite in a colorful leotard will emerge as a sweetheart of Seoul. For reasons as difficult to identify as the gradations of excellence that turn silver to gold, sports fans quadrennially bestow their affection on an elfin gymnast. Perhaps it is the daunting mix of skills: the daring speed and height of the vault, the elegance and precision of the balance beam, the strength and fluidity of the uneven parallel bars, the showmanship and gravity subversion of the floor exercise. Or perhaps it is the sheer beauty of a sport that seems as artistic as it is athletic.

Certainly, the charm of the tiny competitors cannot be dismissed. How, we wonder, can ones so young and so small compete with such fierce determination and concentration? The commentators may speak of "women's gymnastics," but these are adolescent girls. If the 1987 world championships, held last October in Rotterdam, are any indication of things to come, the four events will be dominated by four teenagers: Rumania's Aurelia Dobre and Daniela Silivas, and the Soviet Union's Elena Shushunova and Svetlana Baitova. Most of them weigh less than 90 lbs. and do not clear 5 ft.

But don't start chanting "Aurelia" or "Elena" yet. If gymnastics is among the most beautiful of the summer sports, it is also among the cruelest. Titles come and go overnight, lost by the most negligible slips or breaks of form on an apparatus. In Rotterdam, Dobre surprised even her own teammates by capturing the all-around title, nudging aside co-defending World Champions Shushunova and Oksana Omelianchik of the Soviet Union, who placed second and fifth respectively. Silivas, who had emerged as the 1987 European champion just five months earlier, fell to third following bobbles on the uneven bars and balance beam.

Injuries may take competitors out of the running. Sometimes the enemy is a sudden growth spurt that adds unwanted height and weight. No one knows that better than American Kristie Phillips, who just two years ago was touted as "the new Mary Lou." Then Phillips grew 4 in. and put on 15 lbs. Now, at 16, she is in the disappointing position of being a second alternate: two members of the U.S. team would have to withdraw for her to compete in Seoul.

$ If there is any safe calculation to be made, it is that the Rumanians and Soviets, back after the 1984 boycott, will dominate the team competition and the individual battles on each piece of apparatus, as well as the sprite fight for top all-around gymnast. At the world championships, Rumania edged out the Soviet Union for the team medal by just 0.45 of a point.

The strength of the East Europeans is hard earned. Their rigorous training practices are legendary. In Rumania, for instance, tots are singled out as young as age four for training at one of the country's elite sports schools. To gain admission, the tumbling tykes not only have to excel at tests that demonstrate speed, flexibility and abdominal strength, but they must also convince coaches that they possess that unquantifiable drive that makes for champions. Once admitted, they find that their academic schedules and lives revolve around training. Americans, by contrast, tend not to commit themselves fully to the elite gymnastics clubs until as late as twelve years old. Even then, they often bounce among coaches, trying to find the most comfortable niche.

Whoever the heart slayer in Seoul is, she need not be the best to be the most beloved. Much as Midori Ito, the gutsy Japanese figure skater, charmed the crowd at the Calgary Winter Games despite her fifth-place finish, gymnasts sometimes emerge from the pack more for their sparkle or originality than the perfection of their routines. Olga Korbut, the first Olympic competitor ever to perform a back flip on the balance beam, dominated the 1972 competition, although she placed only seventh in the all-around. Similarly, bubbly Mary Lou Retton was the toast of Los Angeles when she captured the all-around title, but Rumania's Ecaterina Szabo was actually her better in most of the battles in the individual events.

That said, the applausometer favors Rumania's Aurelia Dobre. Weighing in at 88 lbs. and standing 5 ft. tall, the 15-year-old is a petite powerhouse whose feline brown eyes seduce even as her tight-lipped concentration blocks out the noisy crowds. In Rotterdam she claimed the all-around title with flawless elegance and a Nadia-like composure well beyond her years. "Cool?" asks former U.S. Coach Don Peters. "She had ice in her veins." Dobre's maturity was all the more surprising given the fact that this was her first major international competition at the senior level. Moreover, just one year earlier, she had been laid up in a Bucharest hospital, undergoing reconstructive surgery on her left knee.

That injury threatens to haunt her in Seoul. During the past year, Dobre reinjured her knee, requiring additional surgery. Rumanian officials insist she will compete in Seoul, and Dobre says determinedly, "I know Rumania's team needs me." "Rica," as her teammates call her, can be counted on to spellbind the spectators, but the slightest handicap may cede the scoring advantage to Daniela Silivas, 17, a spunky titan cut from the Olga hey-look- at-me school, whose third-place finish in the all-around at Rotterdam was just 0.45 of a point shy of her teammate's score.

When not locked in fierce competition, Dobre and Silivas are pals who share a passion for pop music and food treats. Dobre has a weakness for ice cream; Silivas' tastes run to schnitzel and fries. As the strict training regimen expressly forbids the distraction of boyfriends, they liven their evenings with goose-feather pillow fights and what Head Coach Adrian Goreac cheerfully calls "talk, talk, talk." They are avid readers of adventure books. Dobre, a mischief-maker who collects dolls, favors fictional heroes who "fight all obstacles to reach their aims." Silivas, a quiet and intelligent girl, prefers a stately knight who "is always winning, courageous and good mannered." When they look ahead to Seoul, the rivalry glistens through their mutual affection. "As I wanted to be like Nadia when I started, I want other girls to want to be like Aurelia," says Dobre. From Silivas come fighting words: "I will seek revenge in Seoul."

So will Elena Shushunova, whom Dobre dethroned as world champion. At 19, Shushunova is a geriatric in the world of gymnastics. The Olympics, she concedes, "will be my last big hurrah." A consistent and strong competitor who impresses the judges, the sullen-faced Shushunova lacks the charisma and light-footedness that ignite audiences. But the Leningrad tomboy does not lack confidence. "If I prepare well, I'll get 10s in everything and won't have to worry about my competitors," she says. "I'll roll right over them like a tank."

Some of the stiffest competition will come from those she trains with at the Palace of Sports in Minsk. During a relaxed warm-up, as a Michael Jackson tape plays softly over the loudspeakers, the individual personalities emerge. Natalia Lashchenova, who turns 15 this week, is the prankster, tripping her teammates when the coaches are looking the other way. Svetlana Boginskaya, 15, - the tallest on the team (a towering 5 ft. 2 in.), is the most serious, often perched on a mat between exercises with her nose in a book. Olga Strazheva, 15, has an appetite for science fiction. Svetlana Baitova, 16, totes Jack, a stuffed puppy, wherever she goes. When it comes to talk of Seoul, all playfulness falls away. For these girls it will be a grudge match against the Rumanians. "We won't give anything away," Boginskaya vows. "We won't yield, not in difficulty or in any other aspect."

It is the prospect of so many gymnasts performing at levels of difficulty never before witnessed in Olympic competition that promises to make the showdown in Seoul a hold-your-breath affair. With each Olympics, the sport ascends to a new plateau of audacity that would have been unthinkable four years earlier. And four years from now, even those moves may seem out of the dark ages. So too will the sweethearts of Seoul. When Olga Korbut tried to repeat her Munich triumphs in 1976, she was upstaged by Newcomer Nadia Comaneci. When Nadia tried to re-create her glory in 1980, audiences hardly recognized the once sylphlike pixie. Mary Lou Retton perhaps proved the wisest; she fired her single shot at glory, then retired her grips and took up the commentator's mike.

But however brief the light of these remarkable fireflies, they do endure. When young gymnasts are asked to articulate their dreams, they speak reverentially of being the next Olga, the next Nadia, the next Mary Lou. It is to that exalted podium of first-name fame that the sprites in Seoul hope to vault.

With reporting by Brian Cazeneuve/Bucharest and Paul Hofheinz/Moscow