SPECTATOR SPORT
Slow motion, high glamour
Simon Barnes
IT was one of my longer and more convo- luted anxiety dreams — something to do with lost accreditation and then getting lost myself. It was impossible to get in touch with the office or to find a story to write. I actually dreamt about jet-lag.
I'm never good at dealing with the stress- es of preparing for a long journey and a long assignment, and Sydney really is too far. Everyone keeps telling me how lucky I am, but all I can think about is whether or not I will get an aisle seat, and whether or not I will be able to make my laptop and mobile phone function in tandem.
Base worries. But then someone men- tioned Svetlana Khorkina; and if the clouds did not vanish, at least the sun shone bright for a moment. Khorkina is perhaps the most graceful human being on the planet.
She will be competing in the sport of women's gymnastics. Why not? She is 21, and a woman. She posed for the Russian Playboy magazine to prove that there are women in women's gymnastics; I have only seen the pictures by fax, but it was enough to see that she has made the point beyond refutation.
Most gymnasts perform in a tight, self- constructed tunnel of concentration, block- ing out the audience, everything turned in on the self and the pursuit of personal per- fection. Not Khorkina. She adores being looked at, almost as much as the great Olga Korbut. She adds the dimension of perfor- mance to every routine she does.
After she won her gold on the asymmet- ric bars in Atlanta four years ago, she told the world that she longed to be home for the celebrations. 'I expect a big party, with lots of flowers.'
The asymmetric bars is the least likely event of the four for Khorkina to excel at. She is tall, at least for a gymnast, being three or four inches over five feet. Her Legs take up a great deal of that height. Her lines are long and lean, rather than com- pact and slight like the classic model of the little girl tumblers.
This means that there is an awful lot of Khorkina to dispose of between the bars. Also, her height makes every movement more difficult: the bigger you are, the hard- er it is to turn somersaults. If you imagine Lennox Lewis doing a back-flip, you get the general idea.
Being tall makes it harder to balance, too. On the principle of the lever, the taller you are, the more catastrophic a small error. The closer your centre of gravity to the ground, the easier it is to dance on a beam.
Khorkina has piled disadvantage on top of disadvantage. She is too old, too tall and not even in the right proportions. Every movement is harder for her than it is for the others. But here comes the pay-back: when she brings something off, it is twice as lovely to look at as anything they can do. She must stay longer in the air. She doesn't bring you the incomprehensible flying wrig- gles of the little girls; even at normal speed she has the languorous grace of slo-mo.
Changes in interpretation and a bottom age limit of 16 have made women's gymnas- tics a mature sport. The Olympic Games is 17 days of conflict, and some of the keenest of all will take place between the divas of the gym. Khorkina, the European champion, will be at the sharp end. Let the pouting begin.
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