From Oppression to Training Olympians
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 26, 2007
The family sat in the airport, minutes from its long-awaited exodus
from the Soviet Union in 1989. But there was one more insult: a
decision no child should have to make.
There were two boxes, one filled with the mother’s most expensive
jewelry and keepsakes, and the other with the medals the daughter had
won during her successful but unappreciated gymnastics career in the
Soviet Union.
`Pick one,’ a guard in the security line told Armine Barutyan and her
family.
It was the final slap in the face that Barutyan endured before she
moved to the United States and became one of this country’s most
successful gymnastics coaches.
`Some of the things they did to me, I’ll just never understand,’ said
Barutyan, now coaching Ivana Hong, a 14-year-old California native,
and trying to take her on the Olympic road she was never allowed to
travel.
If not for that, Barutyan’s name might be as familiar today as that of
the Russian superstar Svetlana Khorkina, or maybe Nadia
Comaneci. Barutyan’s heyday came before the 1984 Olympics, when the
Soviets boycotted the Los Angeles Games, a political reprisal for the
United States boycott of the Moscow Games in 1980.
Barutyan’s father grew up in Syria and her mother in Jerusalem. The
family moved to Armenia after World War II. But decades later, the
Barutyans were still viewed as outsiders.
Being Armenian in the postwar Soviet Union was a disadvantage for
anyone like Barutyan looking for a promising sports career.
The Soviets wanted Barutyan to move closer to Moscow – not that
unusual, even now, in Eastern European countries where centralized
gymnastics training is common. They also wanted her to change her name
from Armenian to a Russian-sounding surname. `I didn’t want to do
that,’ she said. `That was my family. I didn’t understand why they
would want me to be someone else.’
She paid a price for her recalcitrance. The Soviets took away her
uniforms, her spot on the national team and dropped her in the
standings at some meets – all to send a message.
In the 1980s, Barutyan was performing gymnastic moves that no other
women were even thinking about. Her dismount off the uneven bars
included three backflips. Off the balance beam, she did a double
layout – two flips with her legs straight.
Barutyan recalled when, despite her top performances, she was left off
the national team for the biggest trips. Once, after the team returned
from an international meet at which Barutyan finished second, the team
had an audience in front of a Soviet government official.
`Who finished first?’ the official asked.
`Svetlana Boginskaya,’ the coach of the gymnastics program responded,
speaking of the Russian gymnast, one of Barutyan’s contemporaries, who
went on to win four medals at the 1988 Olympics.
`And who finished second?’ the official said.
`Not one of us,’ the coach responded.
`I was Armenian,’ said Barutyan, who was left off that 1988 Olympic
team despite being one of the Soviet Union’s best. `Things like that
happen, and it hurts. They make you feel like nothing.’
More than 20 years later, those insults still sting. Barutyan talks
about it much more calmly than her husband, Al Fong, who met Barutyan
shortly after she moved to the United States.
Barutyan had walked into a Los Angeles gymnasium owned by a friend of
Fong’s. The friend was a pack rat and a gymnastics nut.
He recognized Barutyan immediately and took her to his office to show
her magazines with her pictures and videotapes of her performances.
She had no idea any of the material existed. The Soviets did not want
her knowing that anybody else thought she was worthy of worldwide
coverage.
`He called me and said, `You know who just walked in here?’ ‘ Fong
said. `He said I had to hire her.’
He married her, too.
Over the last eight years, Fong and Barutyan have established one of
the best elite training centers in the country, Great American
Gymnastics Express outside Kansas City, Mo.
`My wife and I are passionate about training Olympians,’ Fong
said. `We call it our life’s work. Everything we do from the business
we have to the lifestyle we lead is driven around that.’
Fong’s voice mail message says: `Sorry you missed us, we’re out, busy
training Olympians.’
In 2004, the couple placed Courtney McCool and Terin Humphrey on the
squad that took a silver medal at the Athens Games. Humphrey also won
a silver on uneven bars.
With the Beijing Olympics less than a year away, Hong looks like the
couple’s best prospect for 2008. Hong is a member of the United States
team that is going to Germany for the world championships, which begin
Saturday.
The national team coordinator Martha Karolyi said Hong stood out
because of `the preciseness, the body lines, the perfection of the
technique and the execution.’
Much of that detail would look familiar to anyone who saw Barutyan
perform in the 1980s.
Which might explain why, when faced with the choice of taking her
mother’s keepsakes or her gymnastics medals, she chose the medals.
But Barutyan’s father later found a friend who knew someone at the
K.G.B. and arranged for a bribe to be paid to a security man at the
airport. That way, both boxes made it.
`She’s arguably the most powerful single female gymnastics coach in
the U.S.,’ Fong said. `And now, nobody’s going to take anything away
from her. Not uniforms, not recognition, not anything.’