By Olga Tarasova

“I want to be useful for my country”

Ivan Ivankov was born in Minsk, Belarus in 1975. He began gymnastics at the age of 6 and by the time he was 14, was a member of the Soviet national junior team, training at the prestigious Round Lake national gymnastics center. Ivankov established himself as a top up-and-coming gymnast at the 1991 Junior European Championships in Greece, where he won the all-around, pommel horse, high bar, vault, and still rings titles and earned a silver medal on the floor exercise. The 1994 and 1997 all-around World Champion and the 1994 and 1996 all-around European Champion, Ivankov has competed for over a decade on the international circuit.

– Ivan, you captured the world’s attention at the 1994 World Championship in Australia when you won the all-around gold medal defeating your teammate and countryman, Vitaly Scherba. You were 19 years old. He won six Olympic gold medals at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Was Scherba your idol back then?

– From childhood my idol was Dima Belozerchev. I remember in 1988, when the Olympic team came to Minsk to train before the Olympics; we were still just little guys then. We met the team at the train station with flowers. As fate would have it, later in life, after winning the world championship, I got to meet with them, and we talked as equals. Dima said he didn’t remember the episode at the train station. But life has given me many such meetings.

Speaking of the competition in Australia, I myself didn’t go into it expecting to win. I took my turn, not even in the session with the stronger competitors when Scherba competed. I was before them. But it just happened that no one took the lead over me.

– Did Scherba congratulate you on winning?

– Yes, he walked up and sincerely congratulated me. He said that this is only the beginning, that there is still work to be done, hard work in fact, if I want to stay at this level. He, of course, wasn’t happy with his own results. But he did well. I saw then how you can fight to the end and raise yourself up from 13th place to third.

– You were “the young one” on the team at the time. Was there any teasing from the older teammates?  Yevgeny Plushenko told the world his disconcerting story of how many punches and smacks he took from his older teammates, especially Alexei Yagudin…

– To some extent, you probably find that sort of thing everywhere. Although gymnastics is a very disciplined sport. A smart person will realize that giving advice and helping the younger ones will earn more respect and authority than bullying them.

– Ivan, how did you end up in gymnastics?

– Some coaches visited our kindergarten one day. We were playing outside and they were talking and explaining something to the teachers.  They told us that some people had come from a film studio and they were looking for a strong and talented boy for the starring role in their film. They explained that we’d need to do 10 pull-ups on the horizontal bar. Well, how many pull-ups can six year olds do? I managed to do nine but it was hard. On the tenth, I just couldn’t do it. I just hung there. They told me “Good job, get down, we’ll take you.” But I didn’t get down. I thought “they’re kidding me, they said we’ve got to do ten.” I almost cried, but continued to hang there. One of the coaches helped me do one more and they gave me a letter for my parents.

I was so excited. I ran home and said “Mom! I’m going to be in a movie!” The next day, I started gymnastics. It was not a film set, it was for a different role…That small gym at the army club in Minsk seemed so big to me, and everyone was doing flips. I thought “Really? Someday I’ll be doing that too?”

– You liked it?

– At first, yes. It was so interesting and so exciting. Then, they chose some of the most talented kids for the main group. They started training us really hard – we had stinging, torn up hands, painful stretching, and aching bodies. You had to endure it. I didn’t like that so much. I had a friend, Dima, and we decided that we’d compete at the citywide championship – then we’ll quit. Well, he took third place and I took fourth. We decided that we really need to win the city championships before we get out of gymnastics for good. We were eight at the time. We won the city championship, then the regionals, then we made it onto the state team, then some more competitions, then the national team of the Soviet Union, and the rest is history.

– So winning was a bit addictive for you?

– Victories were very important. They say, you must suffer to reach your goals, but if there are no results or victories, even little ones, then it can be hard. Winning is like a bit of replenishment. It gives you energy and strength to work some more.

– Ivan, do you remember your first trip abroad to a competition? I think at the time that was also a motivator. Svetlana Boginskaya was telling me that at her first foreign competitions she spent all her allowance on bubble gum because in Belarus there was nothing so tasty.

– Of course I remember the first competition abroad. We went to Belgium. I was 12 years old. We ended up there by accident. It was a really big international competition with national teams, but something got mixed up and they sent us from the junior team, myself and another boy from Belarus. We didn’t even have real competition-quality outfits. At that time it was really difficult to get good uniforms. We had hand-me-downs from older team members. They gave us all-wool outer uniforms. We were so proud to wear them, but they hung on us like potato sacks. When we got there, we were really surprised at how everyone was dressed. Compared to the uniforms from other countries, what we had was a little embarrassing. When we took off our baggy outer uniforms and as twelve year olds did what we did, they looked at us with a lot of respect.

We didn’t even have a coach with us. A coach from the Bulgarian team spotted for us on the floor. Back at the hotel, one of the chaperones from the girls’ team ordered us not to leave our rooms and not to talk to anyone, or else that would be our last trip anywhere.

– And did you obey her?

– No. We decided that even if it was our last trip anywhere, we were going to talk to people and went to visit the Italians and Americans. They gave us – two “grown up” athletes – key chains, t-shirts, and pins.

– Ivan, last year you announced that you were leaving the competitive arena. And you left. A lot of people thought “just a year to the next Olympics, he didn’t make it…”

– I’ve been in the sports world for 26 years. At the age of six I came in and now I’ve left it, at 32. I think people may not understand that to be at your peak and maintain that high a level is not in any way easy or simple. It is a difficult and arduous task, both physically and mentally. Yet to move yourself to a lower level is degrading. If I step into the ring, I know, I’m going for a medal. I’m not going to a competition just to participate.

But maybe I was just tired of the subjective nature of it all.  When you have no rich Uncle Sam standing behind you with deep pockets, you’re always running into trouble.

– Let’s talk for a moment about subjective judging. Who then, would you say was behind the medals of Liukin, Artemov, Belozerchev, and Scherba?

– Times have changed. Back then we had the Soviet Union. Who now could win six gold medals like Scherba did at the Barcelona Olympics? It’s just not realistic by anyone’s reasoning. Why was it possible then? After we beat the Japanese and started to dominate at all the world championships, it was possible. We had our own people in the Federation of International Gymnastics. The president, Titov, was from the U.S.S.R. Our people were everywhere. It was almost its own sort of mafia. When the U.S.S.R. fell apart, all the other countries who hadn’t made it to the pedestal but who also wished to win, wanted to get even a little with us for our long years of domination. Up to about 1996, we were still holding on, but in Sydney in 2000, we were already on the way out.

– In Sydney, you took fourth place in the all-around competition. Before the Olympics, the magazine “Sports Illustrated” published your photo on the cover with the headline “World’s Best Gymnast.” Were they condemning you?

– There were moments. They could have given 9.8 or 9.775, and they gave me 9.775. Another competitor got 9.8, and these thousandths of a point made all the difference. At the last Olympics in Athens in 2004, I saw how everything was bought at such a high level. Investigations even reached country presidents. The president of Bulgaria was pressing his NOC (National Olympic Committee) to contest the decision of the judges, when the investigations were about the gold medal for the all-around competition.

I’m not the only one to speak about the problem of subjective judging. A lot of athletes are concerned – and not just gymnasts. I remember figure skater Ilya Averbuch was saying “What do you think; we won the gold medals out of the blue? We flew to the Olympics and behind us flew another plane with fur coats and gifts.” We could talk about this subject for a long time and state a lot of facts, but it’s just painful to watch how sport has changed from an ambassador of peace to a business, where everything is bought and sold.

– At the Athens Olympics you had the same results on the bars as a Chinese competitor. The judges decided to give him the bronze medal and put you in fourth place. Did you take that as a slight?

– Well, several athletes had the same score. The judges decided to give the bronze to the Chinese athlete and the rest would take fourth, fifth, and sixth place. I saw how the gymnasts shook their fists at this decision, some even cried. I understand them. If the president of the IOC (International Olympic Committee), Jacques Rogge, made the decision, then he made a huge mistake. He deprived the athletes not only of Olympic medals but of the opportunity to change their fate, their lives. When you return home from the Olympiad with a medal, people look at you differently.

– Ivan, I am probably not making a mistake when I say that the biggest disappointment of your life was at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. You had won all the preliminary competitions, and were rightfully considered the top contender for the gold. Then, two weeks before the opening of the Games, already having arrived in the Olympic Village, your Achilles tendon snapped…

– I was very depressed. When my Achilles tendon tore, it was like something in me broke, as if everything collapsed and I was empty inside. I was on crutches the whole time in Atlanta. Physically, I was healing, but I was so dispirited. Had I competed in Atlanta, I think the team would have medaled; we lost 25 thousand to Ukraine.

I would have won in the all-around competition and in the individual competitions. It would have been great. I think that in Sydney, it would have been much easier to compete. I’d have won a medal, probably more than one there. But when you miss the Olympics because of an injury, the sport is unforgiving. Too much depends on each competition, it’s all or nothing.

– How were you able to rise from the ashes? The next year, 1997, you shined in the all-around competition at the world championships in Lausanne, Switzerland.

– I was sitting in Minsk, unneeded, unwanted by anyone, I felt everyone had given up on me. Then, an American Olympic champion, Bart Conner, and his wife Nadia Comaneci brought me to the States. I flew to visit them still on crutches, my leg in a cast. I thought, “It’s pointless; everything is over for me.”

They took me to Oklahoma City for rehabilitation, then to Las Vegas to a well-known specialist, Keith Klevin who also worked with boxer Mike Tyson, golfer Tiger Woods, and many other eminent athletes. Keith told me “We don’t just rehabilitate, we make athletes better than they were before the injury.” I was dying during the physical therapy sessions, almost in tears doing the endless exercises. Every night, I went to bed thinking there is no point to all this, and every morning I woke up with the hope that it’ll all be worth it. It was incredibly hard. But I wanted very much to return, and not merely return to compete.

The victory in 1997 at the World Championships in Lausanne was probably my greatest triumph. Above all, it was a victory over myself.

– Ivan, are you satisfied with your athletic career?

– Regardless of the interminable bad luck at the Olympics, I consider myself lucky. I was able to win two all-around World Championships and two all-around European Championships. There are only three people in the world who have done that – Dima Belozerchev, Yang Wei of China, and me. I’m happy with the career that I had.

– Soon after you finished your career, the press published news that you had been offered the position of head coach of the Belarusian National Team. Is that accurate?

– Yes, I met with the Minister of Sports. Unfortunately, the financial terms were not suitable. Maybe they’ll be able to change something. We haven’t finished talking. I would love to work with the Belarusian team and train champions.

But I want to work giving all of myself, without having to worry about the notorious economic factors. I don’t want to have to think about getting a second income, about how I’m going to provide for my family.

– Ivan, where do you live today, in Belarus or in the U.S.?

– Physically, I reside in Norman, Oklahoma, but my heart is in Minsk, Belarus. For now, I’m just trying to figure out my next steps in life. If I’m needed in Belarus, then I will be in Belarus. If I’m not needed there, then I’ll go to where I am needed.

– Where do you work now?

– At the moment, I’m training young gymnasts at Bart Conner and Nadia Comaneci’s gymnastics school. I’m not training them for some great accomplishments, but they are learning something and they love it. I’ve got a great relationship with Bart and Nadia. They are superb athletes and wonderful people. But I want to do more. I want to help my country.