Olympic Champions - Barcelona 1992 Team - Unified Team - Part 4 of 4

[piskoun]

But would have Kalinina been a better choice? (I know, anyway they were 1st...)

[gk891]

It's to my understanding that by 1992, Kalinina was no longer an obvious choice for the Olympic team. Grudneva was a great choice because she probably had the best compulsory exercises on the Unified Team. I also thought she was the best bar worker.

[piskoun]

I've heard too they said they couldn't put a fourth Ukrainian on the Team... For some politics reasons! ;) But I liked Grudneva too!

[gk891]

I personally don't buy that though. Kalinina was not in the greatest shape in 1992. Kalinina from 1990 would've have been an excellent choice for the team but so would've a healthy Dudnik, Laschenova, etc!

[ferency98]

To Piskoun: Yes I also read that Grudneva was the only gymnast from Russia, and if they didn't add her, then there wouldn't have been any Russians on the team. BTW, Galieva was born in Uzbekistan, but she was Russian ethnicity, which is why she was able to compete for the Russian team in the 1996 Olympics.

[piskoun]

Yeah, Chusovitina is an ethnic Russian too, I think (otherwise they wouldn't have pointed out that her husband what a real Uzbek), but in 1992, both were technically from Uzbekistan. And I believe that's really the type of thing USSR had to think about in the composition of their team - they did so in 1981 too when they put Bisherova on the team because the WC were in Moscow and that she was from that city...

[Imthecuteone]

yeah, i think that was the same of any of the republics, the team needed to be evened out a bit. like you can't have a full team of ukrainians nor a full team of russians

[redsoxgirl0280]

Lysenko should have kept her arabian double front. and yes, gutsu's floor did not deserve such high marks

[TuesdayPillow]

Lysenko deserved to be in FX finals over Gutsu.

[russianskatingfan]

@TuesdayPillow Based on what? Lysenko had bigger mistakes on floor here than Gutsu.

[AnnaPavlovaFan]

@TuesdayPillow Agreed. And Galieva deserved to be in the FX finals over Chousovitina.

[SonyaNatalia]

It is NOT the USSR!!!!!!!!

The USSR had gone - this was the Commonwealth of Independent States. To call it the USSR is a huge insult. Also, many of the former Soviet countries were not competing. And countries like Ukraine were competing in the team here, but winning individual medals for their own nation in the other parts of the competition.

[skata524]

I know. There wasn't enough space to write "Commonwealth of Independent States". Howver, you can see I wrote Unified team in the description, that's how I heard them being called during the broadcast.

[TuesdayPillow]

Would you stop being such a pain in the ass?

[peterdreamworld]

I remembered the games in my city and my favourite sport. Thank you so much!!!!!!!

[nonobabum]

que suerte tuviste de poder disfrutarlos, yo ademas de que estaba un poco lejos, era muy pequeño