Managers in the East (the coming of the red ribbons)

Do managers always think in these terms? That it’s a good idea to decorate the story they are telling with add-ons, like Věra Čáslavská’s hairstyle? Hair like a rock ’n’ roll princess, backcombed into a tall bouffant kept in place by a black band that matches her eyeliner, an after-dark American hairstyle. Irresistibly superior, Véra performs skills only men can do. A spotless white Peter Pan collar sets off the black of her costume, her pointed breasts don’t tremble when she bends forward, she could almost hold a champagne glass in her hand as she collects the gold and silver with a smile.

Véra is a witch in a Peter Pan collar. Véra is deliciously dangerous. Her voice rang out loud and clear during the Prague Spring, when she demonstrated against the Soviet invasion and signed the two-thousand-word manifesto. Véra is a muscular fairy. In her hideaway in a Moravian forest where she goes to ground, harassed by the new powers in place, she trains all alone with a fallen tree trunk for a balancing beam. But the Olympic Games are approaching and they can’t do without her, so she is invited to leave her forest, all is forgiven…

When the Czech team enters the stadium for the opening ceremony in Mexico, the crowd gets carried away and chants: ‘Free-dom Czech-o-slov-akia Vé-ra’ as she marches past. Véra makes short work of the competition, what an appetite she has, joyous solar cravings, her skills have been invented and practised on grass, she spins round, her hair deliciously askew, salutes the judges. The public is on its feet, elated at having seen Čáslavská’s towering performance, the journalists comment on the gold medal that will surely be hers in a few moments. Unnoticed, three men in grey suits sitting not far from the judges’ table go over to the Soviet Larisa Petrik to congratulate her. But not to the Czechs, whose coach takes Véra in his arms and consoles her for this last-minute demonstration of allegiance to the Soviets by the Czechoslovak apparatchiks. The two gymnasts have to share the title and the medal.

Véra straightens up. She violates the protocol she has been instructed to follow, yet again. And very few of the millions of TV viewers, so few, are able to understand the implacable message Véra sends to the Czech authorities when, at the first strains of the Soviet national anthem, she ostentatiously lowers her gaze. The daisy stuck in her blonde hair quivers slightly with her breathing. In front of the whole world’s cameras, Véra turns her back on the red flag slowly being raised. Farewell, Véra.

In the West, people are very, very shocked that the gold medal has eluded her, there’s no excuse for all this Olympic dishonesty. And Čáslavská’s class, her courage in the face of the oppressor, will never be forgotten. Ban the USSR? The idea was put to the Committee, but that would be harmful to the sport, after all, they have such a reserve of astonishing gymnasts! The Munich games are approaching, and there is talk of an amazing surprise the Soviets have in store. Some of them claim to have seen a photograph of a very young girl who is able to hold herself upright on the top bar, the one the others can only just cling on to. It’s said that in secret since 1970 the Soviets have been training her to do something no woman in the world has dared to do: a backwards somersault on the beam. Olga K. is this no-other-young-woman-in-the-world. A sharp ferret with crooked teeth, she is really amusing, she has straight, silky hair that her coach ties in bunches with ribbons. When she puts her pretty feet together, her baby frog’s thighs have a gap between them, the skin on the back of her neck is golden, silk protecting her vertebrae, such sweet little bones.

O.L.G.A. Who dissolves in tears in front of the camera lenses, and accumulates stupid mistakes when she is on the uneven bars in Munich. Huddled in her chair from the realization of her failure, she wipes her nose with her hand as she waits for the scores, her face drawn, surrounded by sturdy young women, none of whom even glance her way. A Soviet girl crying! So they’re not all robots! The over-emotional communist who messed up is snivelling live and in colour, to the great delight of American magazines which are wild about this so unwarlike Russian. But the very next day she recovers and delivers what was promised. Glittering moments of fear. Her slender neck that could be snapped in two when she pulls off a skill that eight years later will be banned by the judges as being too dangerous. No one even knows whether she won, and no one cares, they are all cooing with delight at this ‘freshness’, this cool breeze, how wonderful, ‘it’s as if she were seven years old!’

Montreal, 1976. Olga is twenty-one. Miraculously, the little girl is still little. Exhausted from having to fulfil all the Soviet state’s demands, four years of galas and dinners, her skin looks dull from lack of sleep. They tie red ribbons in her straggly hair to gain time, to hear more of the public’s thrilled sighs, mmmm. Red satin bows like the curtains in a back room where she will be offered one last time to eager eyes, red like an accessory that prolongs desire, red which confirms to the buyer the freshness of the image purchased, red the satin sheen of this garter-belt substitute, that’s what is needed, red bows to gain a few more moments because the Other, the new Romanian girl, is only fourteen and is Adorable.