Elena Mukhina

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Elena Mukhina : biography

June 1, 1960 – December 22, 2006

With lingering weakness in her leg and mounting exhaustion from the grueling weight loss workouts, Mukhina had great difficulty coming back up to speed on what was to be the new end element of one of her floor exercise tumbling passes, the Thomas salto. Despite Mukhina’s warnings that the element was constantly causing minor injuries and was dangerous enough to potentially cause major injuries, she was pushed to keep the element in her floor routine, and she continued to practise it even knowing it was a dangerous element. On July 3, 1980, two weeks before the Moscow Olympics, Mukhina was practicing the pass containing the Thomas salto when she under-rotated the salto, crash-landed on her chin, and her spine snapped. She was instantly rendered a quadriplegic. Mukhina was training at the Minsk Palace of Sport when the injury occurred; her coach Klimenko was not present at the time of the accident. The Soviet Union awarded her Order of Lenin in response to her injury and in 1983, Juan Samaranch, the IOC President, awarded her the Silver Medal of the Olympic Order.

Following the injury, the Soviet Gymnastics Federation remained secretive about the events surrounding Mukhina’s cataclysmic injury, with Soviet Team Coach Yuri Titov as the point man discouraging reporters’ questions by playing coy regarding Mukhina’s condition and deflecting inquiries about whether she would be trying for a comeback in 1984, even blaming Mukhina’s "injury" on attempting a skill that she "was not able to do but thought she needed to make the team[…]she suffered injury and missed her chance.[…]All the bad stories, they are not true." Meanwhile, as word spread among the Olympic community that Mukhina’s injuries were far worse than the Soviet spokesmen were saying, coaches all over the world wondered not only what the specific injury was, but how the accident had happened. Initial rumors were that she had fallen on approach to the vault, then Soviet newspapers reported she had fallen during her dismount from the balance beam and had a blackout but then got back up to finish her floor exercise without knowing how badly she had been injured, then finally word emerged that she had fallen catastrophically during the floor exercise. Mukhina was reclusive following the incident, seldom publicly discussing the accident. In a rare interview with Ogonyok magazine, she spoke about the Soviet gymnastics program, criticizing it for deceiving the public about her injury, and for the system’s insatiable desire for gold medals and championships:

"…for our country, athletic successes and victories have always meant somewhat more than even simply the prestige of the nation. They embodied (and embody) the correctness of the political path we have chosen, the advantages of the system, and they are becoming a symbol of superiority. Hence the demand for victory – at any price. As for risk, well… We’ve always placed a high value on risk, and a human life was worth little in comparison with the prestige of the nation; we’ve been taught to believe this since childhood.[…]There are such concepts as the honor of the club, the honor of the team, the honor of the national squad, the honor of the flag. They are words behind which the person isn’t perceived. I’m not condemning anyone or blaming anyone for what happened to me. Not Klimenko or especially the national team coach at that time, Shaniyazov. I feel sorry for Klimenko – he’s a victim of the system, a member of the clan of grownups who are ‘doing their job.’ Shaniyazov I simply don’t respect. And the others? I was injured because everyone around me was observing neutrality and keeping silent. After all, they saw that I wasn’t ready to perform that element. But they kept quiet. Nobody stopped a person who, forgetting everything, was tearing forward – go, go, go!"

Despite this, Mukhina took some of the responsibility for not saying no to protect herself from further harm, and noted that her first thought as she lay on the floor with her neck severely broken was, "Thank God, I won’t be going to the Olympics."