Soviet gymmasts too strong

Press, 24 September 1988, Page 30

Soviet gymmasts too strong

NZPA-Reuter Seoul Vladimir Artemov led a Soviet sweep of the medals in the men’s allround competition on Thursday as the Soviet Union maintained its iron grip on the Olympic gymnastics events.

Artemov, a 23-year-old veteran with six years experience in the Soviet national squad, calmly and competently held off team-mates Valery Liukin and Dmitry Bilozerchev to win the gold medal with a total of 119.125 points. His victory added to the gold medals won by the Soviet Union in the men’s

and women’s team competitions. Liukin took the silver with 119.025 points and Bilozerchev the bronze with 118.975. “All three are about the same, they can tackle the same level of difficulty, they have the same ability and modern technique,” the Soviet coach, Leonid Arkayev, said afterwards. “Today it was just a question of chance which one of them won.” The world champion Bilozerchev scored the day’s highest marks, including three perfect scores of 10 But he lost out on the gold medal because of a

mistake on the horizonal bar during the team event on Tuesday. The marks carried forward into the individual competition proved decisive. Bilozerchev could only have got back on terms with his two team-mates if they too had allowed errors to creep in to their performances. But they were rock steady and Artemov confidently secured his first major all-round title.

“I’ve been/working for this for years,” he said. “I did not feel the stress of competition.” There was never any serious challenge to the

Soviet trio. They waged a private battle for the medals and none of them scored lower than 9.900 on any of the six apparatus. As soon as Bilozerchev got a perfect mark of 10 on the pommel horse, Artemov replied in kind across the hall on the parallel bars. Both Artemov and Liukin got 10s on the horizontal bar while Bilozerchev was doing the same on the rings. Even a third maximum score at the horse vault could not lift the world champion beyond third place.