Sovetsky Sport. July 16, 1971. We have a lot of good gymnasts, and they stand on different rungs. The top one is the main team. A little lower are those from whom reserves are recruited. Last year, before the Ljubljana world championships, there were three candidates for the role of reserve - Elvira Saadi from Tashkent, Rusudan Sikharulidze from Batumi, and Tatiana Schegolkova from Riga. The competition between these three took place literally in the final days of the training camp, and they were brilliantly prepared for it. "What a pity," the coaches said, "that we can't enter two teams in Ljublana."
Sikharulidze won. She went to Yugoslavia, and Saadi and Schegolkova went home to watch on TV.
Were you very upset then, Tanya?
A little bit, yes. Of course, Elya and I were happy for Rusiko. But at the Spartakiad I would like to beat her.
A little earlier, Tatiana Schegolkova, Number One on the Latvian gymnastics team, told us that she did not have a particularly ambitious goal at the Spartakiad, that she wanted to perform in such a way "to please the audience and myself." It turns out that there is a personal sporting goal after all. The girls who close the top and open the second top ten strongest gymnasts in the country have their own sporting conflicts, their own scores, not to mention the fact that each of them wants to rise a step higher.
"Previously, Tamara Lazakovich was also among us [the second group of ten]. Now she is in the main lineup."
However, nineteen-year-old Tanya does not have the ambition and the athletic anger to the extent that, say, Lazakovich is endowed with. And she also does not have the fantastic, overflowing giftedness that is inherent, for example, in Nina Dronova. She is a very precise gymnast, with clean but modest lines, an elegant but restrained manner, in which there is more internal warmth than external brightness. She is a strict, Baltic, gymnast. During performances, she has a serious face with an expression of diligence and concentration. She doesn't smile on the platform, but does when she talks about gymnastics.
How long do you want to do gymnastics, Tanya?
Forever!
And she beams.
But "always" is impossible. What then?
I want to become a coach. In general, my dream is to be a choreographer. I now make floor routines for little girls.
She talks like she is chirping. On the national team, she's called "Schegol" [goldfinch]. This nickname is unpretentious - a derivitave of her surname, like the others. It comes to Tanya - when, in conversation or in thought, she tilts her head to the side and looks with dark bird eyes, and there's a long tail of hair at the back of her head, like a goldfinch. She is a kind and sincere person, sport is dear to her, even with failures and injuries, and the fact that she will perform just to please herself and the audience is said from the heart. Why does the goldfinch sing? Because it can't help but sing.
At the IV Spartakiad, she took part in the competition for schoolchildren and juniors. She walked in the column of her republic during the opening parade.
How did you feel? - She looks for the right word for a long time. - Power...when I was together with everyone...
Then she says that the Spartakiad for her is "very empowering, because people from different sports are all here together, worried about each other, it's probably like the Olympics."
She hasn't been to the Olympics. She will try to get there, but whether she will get there is unknown, "young girls are growing up," there is no sadness in these words, because she loves gymnastics and not herself in gymnastics. Still, it's a little sad that we won't be able to send two women's teams to the Olympics.
S. TOKAREV