Bittersweet Infamy - #22 - Elena Mukhina

Episode Date: July 18, 2021

Josie tells Taylor about Soviet gymnast Elena Mukhina and her career-ending injury. Plus: the 2021 West Coast heat wave, and a look back at infamous fast food promotions.

Welcome to Bittersweet Infamy. I'm Taylor Basso. I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we tell the stories that live on in infamy, shocking the unbelievable and the unforgettable. The truth may be bitter, the stories are always sweet. The Bittersweet summer turned into the bitter heat summer on the west coast. Are you a sweaty little bean up there, Taylor? No, right now it's okay. It never got to me, never got that bad. I was always, I dealt with it surprisingly well. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm always surprised when I deal with anything well, I guess. I didn't want to sound so surprised, but yeah. No, no, you're right. I wasn't that distraught by it, but I think it got up to about

38 in Vancouver, which is fucking unheard of. That is insane. I'm gonna look up what 38 is in Fahrenheit. Yeah, please, please translate for the Americans and only the Americans. Yeah. Everyone else has different systems of measurement than you folks, but you just can't let them go. 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit. Yeah. That is ins, you have absolutely no air conditioning. No, I have a fan and I've got a lot of zest for life, but that was pretty much it. I did get to go into the water a couple times, which was gorgeous. Yeah. If you've never been in a cold body of water during a heat wave, I can't recommend it enough because you, it's been hot long enough for you to forget what cold feels like. And then you just get that full body chill and you're like,

oh, I couldn't stay here forever, but I like it right now. Yeah, I love a goose bump right now. So this was not only the hottest heat wave ever in Pacific Northwest history, which I think is, by the way, a funny parallel back in one of our earlier episodes. We had Josie reporting live from the Houston ice storm. That's true. And now I'm giving you an update on the Vancouver heat wave. So this is like really a living document of climate change that we're putting together here. Isn't everybody? Yeah, yeah. Canada recorded its hottest ever temperature and that was 49.6 degrees Celsius. And that for you, Josie, is 121.28 degrees Fahrenheit. And it was recorded in the village of Lytton. And a couple of days later,

Lytton burned to the ground. I heard that. It just sizzled up. Yeah. It's really sad. It's the entire village. It's an area rich in First Nations history. It's an area rich in Chinese history. In fact, there was a like newly minted, it was someone's passion project. And in 2017, they opened the Lytton Chinese History Museum and it had 1600 local artifacts in it and it burned to the ground. Oh, no. Yeah, it's a, it's a heartbreaker. So they're still too, very, very too hot, very much too hot. Because I think Death Valley clocked in at 120 during that time, which, you know, it's Death Valley. It's right there in the name. It's in the name. If you find yourself within your means and you have a few extra bucks, Google help Lytton, L-Y-T-T-O-N. There's lots of fundraisers.

These people are having a really tough time right now. So be nice. Yeah. If you want to feel, if you want to feel nice about being nice, be nice. So that's how I end all of my wildfire stories, Jesus. Wait, so is the heat wave still going? Like, what's the temperature right now? The temperature right now is, it's like 24, 25, which I can't do the math on that, but you've heard the other temperatures. It's reasonable. Yeah. So do you want a little minfamous? That struck me as a little too despairing to be our minfamous. Climate change is real. So I wanted to come in with something a little bit lighter. Thank you. McDonald's, a classic American restaurant. Yes. Yes. The epitome of American cuisine, really. When was the last time you went?

You know, the last time I went with any regularity, I'll say, was when I was living in China. Oh. Because it was open all night and the coffee compared to other places was pretty good. Yeah. And it was like a little, you know, taste a home kind of deal. I am a fan of the McFlurry, so there's a few times that I'll stop in for that. But actually, the biggest intersection closest to us has a drive through McDonald's and I have yet to go there. So it's been a while. You and then have been able to have purchased a BTS meal. No. Are you aware of the BTS meal? I am aware of the BTS meal. Do you know what the BTS meal is? Like if you were to go to McDonald's in order of BTS meal, what would you get? Isn't it just like a

regular McDonald's hamburger, but it has BTS all over the packaging? The BTS meal consists of a Coke, medium fries, 10 chicken McNuggets, and new limited edition chili and sweet Cajun sauces that were picked by BTS and inspired by McDonald's South Korea. Oh, okay. But you're paying for the sauce here because that's a fucking McNugget meal. Yeah, yeah. I ordered the BTS meal by accident. I didn't even know I was doing it because I was like, give me a 10 piece nuggets and a large fries, bro. But no, but you're not a sauceman. So I'm not a sauceman. So it was indistinguishable from your average McNugget meal. But okay. So for those who don't know what BTS is, BTS is a seven man Korean boy band that debuted in 2013, just in time for K-pop to become a global

phenomenon. They have made bajillions of dollars. They have won every award you can throw a punch at. They've broken records set in the 60s by the Beatles, all this shit. And now they've received the most top top guy shit like truly dance in their way to the very top. And now they've received the most prestigious honor of all lending their name to the BTS meal. So this meal has been a massive success. Demand was so high in Indonesia that restaurants actually had to shut down because the customers refused to follow social distancing protocols. It was like the sauce had been like hand kissed by BTS themselves, right? Well, at one point, a version of that sauce had touched BTS lips. That's true in some like very sterile tasting room in a food laboratory.

So when I dug into this story, I was hoping for violence, chaos, some stand on stand beatings, but yeah, some like Walmart on Black Friday kind of shit. Yeah, that's what I was hoping for. Or like some like nuts price gouging shit or like but it just didn't bear out. It seems to have been a pretty unambiguous success. I have all these figures here that aren't interesting, but everything was up 250 and 380 and every like every vis these people want this BTS meal. Yeah, nonetheless, I took a trip down memory lane to gather up some of my favorite stories about infamous fast food promotions. So this is a little infamous medley for you. In 1998, as part of a promotion for Disney's Mulan, McDonald's introduced a new Sejuan sauce. Okay, this in and of itself,

a fairly unremarkable, your standard marketing time. Yeah, 20 years later, the sauce became an inside joke on the cartoon Rick and Morty. And I don't know the exact details of the story. And I'm sure there's a lot of nerds and yes, you are all nerds out there barking at me because I don't know the exact details. You're not nerds. You're fine. I love you. I'm sorry. But Morty does something like he's literally trying to alter time to get this Sejuan sauce back or something like that or Rick one of them Rick or Morty. Yeah, so they this becomes enough of an inside joke that the restaurant brings the sauce back in 2017 as like a Rick and Morty tie in. Unfortunately, they underestimated the demand leading to crowds of irate customers screaming we want sauce at employees

and a thriving black market that saw individual packets bidding at nearly $1,000. Wow. I couldn't confirm that the one that was bidding at nearly 1000 sold for that. But I did find that someone bought like outright bought five packets for over $800 and it worked out to like 200 something bucks a pop. Was it you, Taylor? Are you are you researching really hard for Buttersweet? Absolutely not. I haven't become the story yet. I'm not that bad. I'm not going method on you yet. I like this one. This one's this one is an undervalued one, but it's funny to me. In 1985 and 86, commercials for Burger King featured a fictional nerd character named Herb. And Herb's deal was that he had never eaten a Whopper in his life for some reason. And because

he's a nerd and you're not, I don't fucking know. I don't understand. They called on fans to visit their local Burger King in hope of finding Herb in person and winning a prize. So if you saw Herb in your local BK, you say that's Herb. But at first, they didn't show people what Herb looked like. They had like a big Super Bowl reveal. So people were like, I don't even know what I'm looking for. Oh, okay. They were trying to hype it up almost like hyping up the Super Bowl commercial. Who's Herb? I want to find him. Yeah. Customers could also get a discounted Whopper by using the phrase, I'm not Herb in their order unless their name was Herb, in which case they had to say, I'm not the Herb you're looking for. Oh, that feels like a very poetic line. I'm not the Herb

you're looking for. That's yeah, it's a little sad in its way. Customers derided the campaign as confusing and boring, which it is. It's so terrible. An 11 year old boy spotted Herb at a BK in New York, Delaware. So they really had Herb out pound and doors and just fucking nowhere disrespect to anyone from New York, Delaware, not even New York, New Jersey, you can't we I'm going to get canceled in Delaware. It happens. I've been canceled in Delaware. Who hasn't? Joe Biden. I was looking into famous people from Delaware once. Joe Biden, Aubrey Plaza. That's it. That's it. That's it. Put the and in there. You gave a verbal comma. Yeah, that's it. That's there's nothing else there, except for Herb. This 11 year old boy spots Herb. They don't give him the prize

because he's not of age. They give the prize to like some older person who's with him. Okay, okay. According to Wikipedia, Burger King defended their decision stating that the restriction was intended to dissuade students from skipping school to search for Herb. Oh, God, which feels like made up to me, but whatever. Was it on a Saturday? Like what day of the week was it? Was it school hours? What if he's home? I don't know. That's that's for that's for next episode, the Herb incident. So the Delaware State Senate passed a resolution condemning Burger King's actions as consumer fraud. Oh, shit. Yeah, but it's the Delaware State Senate who fucking we can't air this in Delaware. Amid a 48% loss of profits, Burger King fired its advertising company in 1986. So that's that

for Herb. On the bright side, he did appear at WrestleMania two alongside Clara Peller, the Where's the Beef lady? Oh, that's a cute pairing. I like that. But you wouldn't think they'd get along because they're rivals, right? Notionally. Notionally. But it's, you know, it's all fake fighting anyway. No, that burger shit gets real. No one could tell me different, man. It's still real to me. In April 2017, Starbucks introduced the unicorn Frappuccino. Do you remember this guy? No. You don't remember the unicorn Frappuccino? Where were you in 2017? I was here in Houston. Yo, the unicorn Frappuccino was huge. I'm shocked you don't remember this. It's another one of these ones that like made Starbucks a bajillion dollars.

Okay. It was made with ice, milk, pink powder, sour blue powder, creme frappuccino syrup, mango syrup, and blue drizzle. What is in blue drizzle? That was my exact fucking question. It's like avatars or something. So I feel like I know less about that drink having heard the list of ingredients. I have more questions than I fucking started with. Yeah, dude. But this thing sold off the shelves. It caught a lot of flak for being a terrible tasting mess boasting 59 grams of sugar. Oh, that's like your weekly, isn't it? Good. You want to know what's in blue drizzle, apparently it's just sugar. Shockingly. Customers were irate because people were running out of the shit really, really fast because Starbucks didn't anticipate demand, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah. Yeah. Wild. Because where the fuck do you find another bag of blue drizzle on the fly? I know a few people, but they're not good people. Oh, gosh, it's true. Shit, that made me lightheaded. Thank you. It was probably the blue drizzle, really. Yeah, it was a Brooklyn coffee shop called The End. sued Starbucks for $10 million for copyright infringement, saying that it already served a blue drink called the Unicorn Latte. The companies settled out of court. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, I love it when we can all just be friends with a billion dollar corporation. So I asked my friend Casey, he was a Starbucks employee when this was all kind of going down. I can get a direct quote

from someone on the front line here like, how was that? Yeah, what was that like for you? And he said, I randomly wasn't on that day. So we don't got anything. Oh, okay. But he did say that for months afterwards, little girls would come in with their parents and the parents would be like, give your order, baby. And they'd be like, I want the unicorn Frappuccino. And he had to be like, no, baby, we don't have the ingredients for that anymore. It's over. So many babies getting tossed around. We killed the unicorn. Do you want his horn? It'll be $8. Lastly, we would be remiss to ignore the king of fast food promotion scandals, the McDonald's monopoly promotion, which bore out $24 million in fraud between 1989 and 2001. This is not a infamous story. There's an HBO

mini series that I haven't watched, but would like to. Yeah, called Mick Millions that goes into this. And I bet it's really good. Chief of Security Jerome P Jacobson hoarded the most valuable game pieces, which he would share with his co conspirators, who would claim the prizes and share the profits. Jacobson pleaded guilty to three counts of mail fraud in federal court in Jacksonville, Florida, and served three years in federal prison in Jacksonville. That's gotta suck. Yeah, let's lose Florida too. Fuck it. How many other states can I alienate here? Well, we are just as bad. Canada's just as bad. Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise. We suck too. So humble. That's what makes you all so great. For sure. All right, Josie, what do you got for me? Taylor,

are you a big Olympics guy? I don't like the Olympics. Tell me more. Do you want to hear more? Yes, I do. Yeah, okay. Big, large scale displays of nationalism make me nervous. That's the whole story. Okay, that's pretty good. That's it. That's that's literally the whole thing. Yeah. I mean, we lived in Vancouver when it was the 2010 winter 2010. Yeah, 2010. That was massive here. That was Oh, you know, you're taking me down memory lane here. Yeah, that was a big old party. I didn't really imbibe in much of the party. I'm just not a massive, massive party guy. But I remember everyone was very happy and very light of spirit. And I enjoyed that. And it was nice to see a familiar city activated in an unfamiliar way. Well, I remember that that 2010. And I remember

everybody who wasn't in the Vancouver area was like, Oh, that's so cool. You can go see this and go see that. And then I was like, Well, actually, no, it's really expensive. I can't afford to do all that. Like, no, actually, the downtown East side was getting weirdly crowded out a lot of people, a lot of unhoused people were being like, shuttled various other places and in camps for being actively taken down. There was a lot. I mean, that happens with I think with every city, the city cleanup doesn't include every citizen. No, that's absolutely. I want to thank you for sure for raising that point, because I'm talking out my experience of someone who was like a Mary spectator, but it's not even just the Olympics. It's so often things like the World Cup. Yeah.

Any, any sort of big, this country gets this sometimes it comes with, yeah, there's maybe some infrastructural improvements and a nice shiny coat of paint is put on everything. But yeah, as, as, as you say, at who's expense, right? Yeah. Yeah. But I do the one positive memory I have of it. I was listening to a hockey game team Canada was playing and I was listening to it on the radio on my front porch, because it was a really warm spring or winter. It was spring already. It was like spring coming early. So I was sitting on the front porch listening to a hockey game. And every time they scored or you know, the goalie did a save or whatever on team Canada, you could hear it like ripple through the city. And that was really cool. I was into that. I love that.

Yeah. I love that. So as you might know, the 2020 Olympics are happening in 2021, which I personally love, because I'm not a huge fan of the Olympics, but I love the idea that all of their marketing and all the, all the advertising that they've done had 2020 in it and they can't get rid of it. So they're just keeping it at 2020. It sucks your mind fuck. I love it. No, I love it. I love it. That's so surreal. You thought 2020 was dead. Well, guess what? We haven't had the Olympics yet. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I it's, it's really like that. Kids are going to read that in a textbook and be confused and it's going to be great. I just Yeah. Yeah. They'll be like, wait, how did they beat this world record in 2021, but it's the 2020

so confusing. I love it. Just spice of life. Good for you. I love, I love finding small things that make me happy as well. So to preface my story, I feel like it might be important to share a personal experience that I've had. So when I was about seven or so, we had these really good family friends. Um, and they had two kids who are about my age and I hung out with them a lot and they're really cool family. They had like young hip parents and the kids were really nice and like stylish. The, the boy had a rat tail for a long time. They had a potbellied pig as a pet. Too eccentric. Dial it back. Love it. The dad surfed. The mom was a ballet dancer. She had

like a studio in the house. So they were just like, you're really cool. And to top it off, they had a trampoline. Best. Great quality and a friend. Rock tumbler. Did they have a rock tumbler? I mean, you were a trampoline family. Oh, we were a trampoline family. You were. I don't know about the rock tumbler. Did you ever have a rock tumbler? No. See, fuck, fuck the rock tumbler, whatever. No, yeah, we were a trampoline family. The basses. Cool kids. Yeah, a lot of neon and hot shit. Yeah. Hot shit. We would put on neon when we were wrestling on the trampoline. We would put on like neon singlets and like green wrist tape because we wanted to look like Bret Hart. Oh, the most Canadian thing you'll ever hear out of me. So cute. I love that. So me and these two

kids, we'd always be on the trampoline is really fun. And I remember one night we were jumping away and we were playing the soundtrack to space jam out the living room window and we were jumping. On a slam. Yeah. But specifically, I remember jumping to R. Kelly's I Believe I Can Fly. Yeah, wow. Which if you have not trampolined to I Believe I Can Fly, my friend, you have not lived. I know R. Kelly is a piece of trash, but the song. But you didn't know that then. I didn't know that then. You were able to access it with complete purity. Exactly. It is a beautiful song to jump to, I have to say, it feels like you're taking flight every time you jump. Jumping away to I Believe I Can Fly. Sorry. I think about it every night and day. Spread my wings. Fly away. So I'm singing.

I'm jumping. It's great. When all of a sudden as I come down from a jump, my foot, one of my feet slips out in front of me. I hate that for you. And it pulls in front. But my other foot kind of stays back because it's already landed. And the maneuver forces me to do the splits. That's tough. I scream out in pain. I crumble into a ball. I have never been a flexible person. Even at a seven-year-old age, I could not do the splits on my own, nor could I do it being forced. It was insanely painful. And even though in that moment, I believed I could fly, I still knew deep down that I could not do the splits. So it was made doubly embarrassing because as I mentioned, the mom was a ballet dancer. She was like this slight little woman who was very flexible. And

I'd seen her do the splits while standing. She was like stretched with her leg on the wall and was just like, oh my god. So she had to help me off of the trampoline. I think I know what your story might be. Give me ice. Oh, and I was just like in tears. And I'm like probably wearing some weird squirt thing with popsicle stains on my shirt. Yeah, yeah, you for sure work. Yeah. Side ponytail for some reason. Yeah. I can't even catch my breath because I'm so like, I was horrible. It is the closest that I've ever come to gymnastics. And I am never going back. That was it. Fair to use. So with that in mind, Taylor, yes, I'm going to tell you the story of a young gymnast named Elena Mokina. Don't know this one. You don't know it. Okay, good.

Don't know this one. I thought you were going Kerry Strug. Kerry Strug. Who's that? She's the one who the gymnast who landed and snapped her ankle at the 96 Olympics. That's right. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. That's right. Yeah, you were doing all this dancing between gymnastics and foot injuries. And I was like, Kerry Strug, baby, it's Kerry Strug, but it was not Kerry Strug. This one is worse. Oh, no. Yeah, worse even than that. Yeah. Okay, okay, let's go. I will say too, she was a rushing gymnast. So I am entering again into that space of like 1970s Cold War Russia. And I'm yeah, your fave. I fucking love it, dude. When are they doing Cold War two, right? Like, come on. Right, I know. It's already happening.

It's happening all around us. Yeah, I think I figured out at least maybe a little bit of why I find it so fascinating. And it's because the propaganda machines in Russia and the US are so different, and yet the outcomes are so similar, that I find like the comparison between them really interesting. And then the like, the gray area between them where the Russian media says this, or the Russian government says this, and then the American media government says one other thing, and where they don't overlap. I just, I don't know, it's all such a messy revealing situation. I think that might be why I like it. That makes sense. So Elena, or she's called just Lena. Okay. She was born June 1, 1960. So a little summer baby for our bittersweet summer over here.

She's born in Moscow, in Russia. When she is five years old, the apartment where she's living with her mother catches fire. Lena is not there. She's like away with her grandmother, or I'm not even too sure if it's with her grandmother or another, or in another space. She's not in the apartment when it catches fire, but the entire building goes up in flames, and her mother dies. And by the time that Lena goes back to the apartment, it's been destroyed. Not only has the fire taken it down to studs, but they've removed anything. So she's come back to nothing? Absolutely nothing, as a five-year-old. Everything has vanished, literally in a puff of smoke. Wow, that's horrid. Yeah. Her grandmother, Anna Ivanovna, raises her. And from an early age, she shows a keen interest in figure

skating and gymnastics. So they're kind of, you know, intertwined there. She was pulled by a scout who's visiting her elementary school to train with the state program. So there's this very complex Soviet training system. I'm sure there is. There's part of national gym. There's a lot of different names for it, I think partly because of the translation, but one of the names is the CSKA, the Central Red Army Sports Club. Okay. And it's connected to the army. It's like a branch of the army, almost. Isn't everything. In the 70s, it is state-backed with millions and millions of rubles for facilities, for coaches, equipment, travel, sport, sport medicine, scouts selecting those students from the elementary school, that kind of thing.

It's really, really complex. It's a branch of the military. It's huge. And apparently the sports medicine, I didn't know this, but Russians were like, and I think residually still are kind of at the top of sports medicine because they were able to put so much money into these government programs. Crazy. Yeah. So Lena was part of this machine where they would be searching for young athletes and giving them a lot of agility tests, endurance tests, and that kind of thing to figure out what sport they would best fit into. So they're just picking up kindergarteners and being like, you're going to be an ice skater. You're going to be a gymnast, that kind of thing. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Truly, truly a thumb in every pie, Mr. Stalin. Jankies.

I know. Who is it at this point? When are we? It's in the 70s. I don't think it's quite yet. Gorbachev. Is it Brezhnev? It may have been. Let's see. Brezhnev. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So they're really kicking up a storm and they've been doing well. A lot of the international competitions, Russia is taking home gold. They're doing, they're just hot fucking shit, right? Right. In many different arenas. Summer, winter, Russia is dominating across the board. Right, right. So Lena has started training with the Red, or Central Red Army Sports Club.

Okay. It is an intense and very rigorous routine of training. Yeah. I don't know. What is it, when I say like Russian gymnast, what do you see? What is your initial reaction? I see a 14 year old girl who looks like a 12 year old girl and she's wearing a lot of makeup is kind of what I think. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. Why, why do you say that? I don't know why. I'm thinking of like shows that I've watched and stuff like this, like the media that I've consumed where like the Russian female gymnast is like tiny and she's yelled at constantly being like, you're not good enough. Yes. Harder, hard, you know. And like usually her coaches are these potbellied males.

Old men with big mustaches and. Yes. Everyone's from behind the iron curtain and there's. Exactly. They're being beaten with boards and given ice baths. Yes. Yes. Yeah. She's, you know, maybe she's in that. Maybe American propaganda about that is a little, you know, we'll say that. So she trains really hard. She's there all the time, but she's not particularly remarkable. Nobody is, is really invested in her. She's part of the team, but she's not, she's not a standout star. Right. Until 1975 rolls around. So she's 15 years old. Okay. And there's two situations that create an environment for Lena to come up. And the first is that there is a gold medalist, a woman who's racking up medals for Romania. And her name is Nadia Komonecki. I know her.

Yes. She is the only person, since then they've changed the rules, but she's the only person in gymnastics history who garnered a 10 out of 10 score. Right. On her. I forget what it was. It was a floor routine, maybe. So she is like the pinnacle. She's kind of taking over a star. Rarified air. Yeah. Yeah. And that pisses the Russian team. I shouldn't say Russia. The USSR, because they're still the USSR at this point. Right. It pisses them off so much because Romania's close. It almost could have been included in the USA. You know, it's all this already messy political stuff happening. But then also she's beating their butts. This huge Russian machine, this huge USSR machine. She's kicking their butts. So there's that where competition is turned up.

They got to get all of their gymnasts in gear ready to go. So there's that happening. And the second thing that's happening is she's assigned a new coach, Mikhail Klamenko. And he was previously a men's coach of gymnastics. He's a men-allaged Russian dude. Yeah. He's very invested in training an Olympian. Right. So it's not just he's invested in the USSR team or he's invested in, you know, the girls and their well-being. He's invested in being an Olympian coach. Okay. So he turns out to be a rigorous coach like them all, but he works with her so much that she trains and she trains and she trains and she delivers this amazing performance at the 1978 World Championships in Strasbourg, France. Okay. She's 18 at this point and her performance is

just all around stunning. She takes everybody's attention. She becomes in that rarefied air, even though this is just a world championships, not quite an Olympics. Did you see this performance? I've seen snippets of it. Yeah. What did you think of it? Gnarly. It's so gnarly. No, no, no. It's like she won gold in all of these different types of events. Right. So it was the floor exercises. She tied for gold. She was on the bars. She was on the beam and she won either some combination of gold or silver in all of these. She made history by unveiling a new move, which became her signature move, which was like a full twisting, what's called a Corbett flip on the bars, but like it's

a specific, there's a lot of jargon in gymnastics. Is the Corbett flip named after Olga Corbett? Yes, it is. Boom. I just want to feel smart. Oh, well, you do it all the time, so. I'm so sorry. No, I meant it like you're smart all the time, but I realized what I said. No, it was right both ways. It was right both ways. I love you. It's all good. So another thing she does is like a tucked double back Salto dismount. Salto just means somersault. I had to look that up. She put that together and that move is still being used. That was her Corbett flip. Yes, exactly. She did a full twisting double back somersault on her floor routine, which was dubbed the Muccina, which was after her. Her name is Muccina, but

Muccina, you know, the thing that's particular about her too is that she was doing all of these innovations, all these kind of crazy differentiations of classic moves, but, you know, putting them together in really unique ways. And yet she still had a very Soviet style, which meant that it was heavily influenced by ballet, kind of expressive lines still. I think the ballet description helps me kind of see what that might look like a little bit more. Still pretty traditional in some of the flourishes and that kind of stuff. Nothing like no crazy music, no crazy outfits, you know, whatever. She's like Soviet in her style. And yet what she's doing is really innovative. So this is really exciting for the team. She beats out Nadia Komonekchi, which is like,

Russians are loving it. Yeah, I know that that's the big moment they've been waiting for, huh? Yeah. And she even beats out the top ranking Soviet gymnast who's on her team, Nelly Kim. So who's like at the top of the Soviet team. And then all of a sudden, Lina comes up and it's like right, right beside her. So she just like fucking kills it. It's 78. The Summer Olympics are 1980. And not only are they the next worldwide event, and she's perfectly primed to compete in them. They're also in Moscow. I should make a vibe. Why am I not drinking vodka right now? This is just like large glasses of harsh vodka, like it's water. We, oh, we should say that both Taylor and I are wearing gray sweatshirts with the sleeves cut off.

Yeah, shapeless gray sleeveless sweaters. I did it to tell this Russian Olympian gymnastics story. And then Taylor just copied me. But yeah, I changed my top. You look great. You look like a teen heartthrob over there. Oh, thank you so much. Okay, so she is like this hot commodity for the 1980 Summer Olympics. Now I watched the Olympics sometimes when gymnastics come on, I'll give it a look. But I needed to do a little more homework on what exactly the gymnastics was in the Olympics or at this elite level. Because I realized I didn't know a lot. So the gymnastics that we are talking about are officially called artistic gymnastics. Okay. And it's been part of the Olympic program

since the first modern games in Athens, which was 1896. So they've been around for a while, though women weren't able to compete until 1928. Oh, I didn't know that. So in the women's division, there are four medaled events. There's the vault, which is the thing that you vault over, right? Yeah, that's the vault. Yeah, if you got it. Again, my knowledge of gymnastics is very low because I accidentally did the splits as a child. Understood. I completely understand. That's it would be the same for me. Yeah. So the women have the vaults, the uneven bars, the beam, and the floor routine, both men and women compete in individual and in team all around. The women's floor routines are performed to musical accompaniment. And so that adds another

dimension to the competition. Right. And then all the other ones are not, which I don't know if I had really kind of put that together. But yeah, when you see somebody on even bars, it's like weirdly quiet and all you hear is like that. That's true. You raise a good point. In all of these events, they are judged on a point system. And the judges mark each athlete on the complexity and aesthetics of their executed techniques while considering other aspects such as balance and stability. So this is from the Tokyo 2020, but actually in 2021, informational websites overview of all the events. So also, I know the Olympics kind of suck, but the animation and cute little stuff that the Tokyo Olympics is doing, adorable. I mean, of course it

would be, but it's like, melt your heart. It is cute. We had good mascots in Vancouver. We had Quachy and then Quachy guys. Yeah. I love them. I still think they're very cute. Even yeah, even with the tainting of the Olympics, they're still kind of cute. That's how I feel about all the animations for all the Tokyo stuff. Quachy can't help it. He's just a cuddly Sasquatch. He didn't do anything. So, and I don't think I really realized this about gymnastics either is that each routine, no matter what, like the floor kind of makes sense, the music and all of that, it feels kind of like figure skating to me. Like you create a routine that showcases what you can do, but you make it artistic and da, da, da, da, da. But it's also for the uneven bars and the

beam and the vault as well. The way that you put together a routine, a coach and an athlete puts together their routine is that you have these moves that are relatively prepackaged. Like you see somebody else doing, you're like, oh, I want to do that. That looks cool. Yeah. But then the artistry of it all is how you're going to combine all of these moves seamlessly. Pro wrestling. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's all, how many moves are there? Right. It's the story that you tell with them. Yeah. Ballet. All these things. Exactly. Exactly. And I think a lot like wrestling for gymnastics, it's also this really high endurance and skill too. Yeah. Like can you do two flips instead of one? Can you do three? How about four? Yeah. And like how difficult can you

make it? Yeah. But still make it artistic as well. So there's always this like push and pull. And every new person who does something crazy cool that raises the bar and then you've got to top that and then top that and then top that. Yes. Which is an interesting thing that's happening right now with Simone Biles. Have you heard this? No. What? With the 2020 Olympics. So my mom was telling me about it and I think I got it wrong when she initially told me. There's some ideas that they're banning some moves from her repertoire. Oh, okay. But what they're actually doing is that within this complex point system of judging, you don't get as many points for attempting some of these moves that Simone Biles can do because they are so advanced.

They're nerfing Simone Biles. They're making it, they're bringing Simone down kind of is and I imagine people feel upset about that. Yes, exactly. I mean, well, one, she's the most decorated gymnast in the history of gymnastics, but also she's a really prominent black athlete. And so there's a lot that happens with that too. But there's also this idea as well that if you encourage any and all top elite athletes to go so crazy that they potentially could hurt, maybe not themselves. It becomes dangerous. Yeah. But if the competition is like, oh, well, Simone did, you know, XYZ, I got to do XYZ plus, you know, and it pushes, it pushes that way. So I understand where the committee is coming from and what that looks like. But they're not banning

her stuff. They're just you get points on like your innovation, right? And so judges aren't allowed to award her a certain amount of points for that innovation, because she's like over innovating, I guess. That's a sad story. Yeah, to me. But I don't know enough about the subject to weigh in, but my instinct there is to be defensive of Simone. I agree, as is mine. As is mine, because she's the best of the best. You're penalizing her for being too good now. Yeah. Yeah. So back to 1970s era of this gymnastics and the Olympics in total are getting a lot more TV coverage. And the technology of the TV broadcasting is such that they can start televising more and more events and actually previous to televised Olympics, the gymnastics

wasn't super popular. It was pretty niche. Obviously, you know, it's not it's not necessarily a team sport in the way that we know team sports. So it wasn't super popular. But then once they had the technology to properly televise it, it took off. All these stars started shooting up and, you know, they weren't just stars within the gymnastics world. It was like, oh, we know this person, we know that person, you're all different countries. And it's, you know, it's a really, really visual sport. I mean, I guess a lot of sports are visual, you know, but like curling isn't as televisable as like watching this chick. Yeah. Fly. Maybe you've just never seen a good enough curling game, man. That's true. Next time you come back home, we'll hit one up.

Okay, I've never, I've never been to a fucking curling game. We should just curl. Curling is fun. We should just curl. We have the sweaters for it. Yeah, there we go. Gun show. So, Lena, 1978 is when she made her beautiful, daring debut. And 19, so from that time forward, she is training hard for the Olympics. Her coach, Mikhail Klamenko, who, as I mentioned, is a men's gymnastic coach. He wants her to be one of the few female athletes to do an element that's from the men's gymnastics routines. So he's asking and training and working with her to do what is called a Thomas Salto. So the Thomas Salto is named after an American male gymnast. His name is Kurt Thomas from Florida. That's all I got. Hey, Kurt. Yeah, I do know that he kind of faded away from the

Olympic stuff because it was before 92 when you could be paid to be an Olympic athlete. And he just like, you know what? I got a family. I'm not, no. I gotta do something that makes me money. And then he got into crypto and it was fine. That's always the ending to the crypto story. And it was fine. And that was just it, man. Yeah. Easy money. Super cool. Yeah. So the Thomas Salto is, I'm going to throw some jargon at you, a one and a half Salto with somersault backward into a tucked or piked position with one and a half twists or a one and a half Salto backward in a layout, meaning straight position with one and a half twists. We call it the good morning burger. Like that's fucking, that's our menu. That's, that's, that's not, that's too many. Yeah. No,

that's too many. I should also say this is for the floor routine. So they're on like that bouncy floor and it's got the square. They have to stay inside the square, right? So you go from one corner and you just like flip, fly, hamburger, french fry, and then you're at the other, right? She's not wrong. So one of the crazy things about the Thomas Salto is that it involves a, what looks like to me as the layperson, the professional layperson that I am, you have to dive in what looks like into the floor and then at the last minute curl under. It's one of those tucks. I don't like it. I don't like it, Josie. I don't think anyone should be doing that. No, it is wild. I'll say now it's been banned for both men and women. First they banned it for the women

and then they got banned for the men. We don't need to be doing that. It ain't that good. It's probably that good. I mean, it's probably that good. It really does look like they're just like diving into a pool or something, but then all of a sudden it's just like and then they're on their feet. It's wild. Yeah, Google this shit. Yeah, do you want to do you want to? Yeah, sure. Yeah. Okay, so this is Thomas Salto doing it. Oh, that's it's that that little dive at the end there. That's not worth that. It's not worth it. That's a beautiful flourish. It's not so good that I need people out there breaking their necks for it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's my call. This is in Taylor Court. I call it down the line. I calls it like I sees it. You've always been fair.

Get out of my courtroom. You've always been fair. Yeah, I have. So Lena is training for this and it becomes very apparent very soon to her that this is an extremely dangerous maneuver because it depends on being able to get enough height and speed to make all the flips and all the midair twists, the hamburger and the french fry to fly fly fly. Yes. And you still have to land in bounds. So within the trap or within the square, that's enormously complicated with enough room to do the forward roll. And you had to have perfect, not near perfect, you have to have perfect timing to avoid either under rotation, which means that you're landing on your chin or over rotation in which you're landing on the back of your head, either of which that's the one that scares me

could be fatal. Yeah. Oh, the first one is bad too. I mean, all of them are bad. Yeah. I don't want to die doing gymnastics. The particulars of it don't concern me. No. Yeah. Yeah, that's rough. It's really rough. To make matters even more rough, during this training, leading up to the 1980 Olympics, she broke her leg. She was doing, I don't think it was specifically for the Salto, but it was another, you know, because she's on the uneven bar, she's on the vault, she's on the beam. She was doing something. She was training, she was performing, she was doing one of the many forms of gymnastics that she's constantly doing. Yeah. And she broke her leg. And it kept her from going to the World Championships in Fort Worth, where because she couldn't go,

or, you know, supposedly because she couldn't go. So the Soviets suffered in their competition to the Romanian Nadia Quimeneci. So they were already kind of like, ah, we got to get back. We got the Olympics. We got to gear up for the Olympics. That's the one. That's the one. That's the one. That's the one. Great. Your Soviet villain impersonation. Yes, if you get the Olympics, it's the biggest prize. Yeah, exactly. Well, if you think about it too, it's the one with the most international fame. Like these other ones are huge, like the World Artistic Gymnastics Competition, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all of that. Like they're huge, but no, the layperson doesn't know. I don't know what they are. The Olympics is a global brand, global presence. Everyone knows what

the Olympics is. Which is partly why the Soviets are pumping so much money into the sports programming is so that they can have this wicked, intense presence in the world stage, right? Yeah. So it is huge. She goes to see the doctors, they slap a cast on her, and they're like, okay, well, heal up, heal up. However, her coach was pretty much saying like, we've got to get you training. This isn't good. So they give her about a week in the cast. And then the doctors are, the doctors take it off. Obviously, the doctors are with the National Gym. There's, and the coaches, so it's kind of, when I say the doctors and the coaches, I mean, they're kind of working in cahoots. I don't think that they're really thinking about the athlete's best health. They're thinking about the big golds

and international recognition. So the doctors take her cast, take Lena's cast off. Her coaches say that you're being lazy. You're not being conscientious. It's not you that can't do it. It's that you won't do it. So it's like, there is no, you know, it's shitty, shitty. Yeah, that's a terrible situation. And this is what you've been groomed to do forever without like, this is your entire life and has been since you were like, plucked out of a basket by the KGB as a child. Exactly. Yeah. Suckled on vodka and yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So, and I don't think it's particularly a bad break. It's just a break, but they take the cast off too early. So she starts training again. Even before she starts training, she's walking and she's like, this feels uneven.

Like I can't, I'm walking crookedly. Like this doesn't feel right. And so she's trying to get them to put it back on. She's saying, you need to put the cast back on. I'm not healed. It's not ready. The coaches say different. The doctors then do differently. She starts training again. And then finally the doctors, and the doctors are part of the Central Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics. So again, like all the sports medicine, the Russians are at the height of it. They know a lot of what's going on. So I imagine they know what was happening. They took another x-ray and they saw that yeah, those bones didn't fully heal of course. Yeah. And so they put another cast on her, which is great. But then her coaches are like, you're being lazy. You need to train with a cast

on. What are you doing? Get out there. Don't go through your shit. What the fuck? Yeah. Don't train for gymnastics with a cast on. That's a fucking terrible idea. I feel bad for this poor person. I think it's probably a lot of old dudes barking at a young woman who's just trying to tell them something about her body that is like urgently relevant. It's bad. She has a small surgery on it, which is supposed to kind of help it go faster. But it doesn't really work all that well, of course. They take the cast off. She still feels really weird and she's not feeling obviously on the top of her game. While she had the cast on, she gained weight because her usual exercise routine is eight hours a day. So she's sitting or laying down for at least one, even a week. That's a

massive change. It's a massive change and her body's responding like it should. And so she is training super hard. She's trying not to eat. She's trying to lose weight so that she doesn't have to carry that weight around. On July 3rd, 1980, which is two weeks, two weeks before the Moscow Olympics, she's training at the Mink's Palace of Sport, which is a big, you know, huge gym when she has another injury. Her coach, Klementko, was not present. He was not there, but all the other coaches were. And there's some kind of debate about where people watching her closely are telling her to do this. If Klementko wasn't there, da, da, da. She was practicing the Tomasalto, the crazy dive into a hard wooden floor. And she under-rotated so that meant that

she crash-landed on her chin. Yikes. Her cervical vertebrae crunched. What? She felt absolutely no pain, which is good. That's nice. But it snapped her spine, leaving her a quadriplegic. Yeah. That doesn't feel very good. I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah. Even though all this time, she had been saying like, hey, come on. I don't think I'm healed. I don't think this. I don't think that. But she even says on her, of her own account in some interviews, she, and this is with some time having passed. She said, I was stupid. I really wanted to justify the trust put in me and be a heroine. While I was in the cast, I gained weight. I had to get rid of it. Everything was rushed again. I would come to the Central Army Sports Club two hours early.

And this is with an injury and rush around the gym like a crazy person. The workout would just be beginning and I didn't have a drop of strength left. I was so tired then, both physically and psychologically. Poor thing. So apparently when she fell, and this is kind of reported on after the event, she says that the accident happened. She couldn't feel anything. She just couldn't move anything. And she thought to herself, thank God, I won't be going to the Olympics. Oh, yeah. Christ. That's heavy. This is the type of coaching too that like, and she says this too, once my coach told me, until you break, no one will let you go. Meaning like you need to train the hardest. You need to put your fucking heart into every single minute of your training until

you break. And so when she finally literally broke her spine, she's like, oh, what a relief. Can you imagine that? Like breaking your back and being like, oh, thank God. Jesus, that I can't imagine. Yeah. The physical and psychological stress of being a high level athlete is nothing to sneeze at. No. Even divorced from this context of this woman's story where she was like trained by the government to be a gymnastics robot. That's, that's a heartbreaker. Yeah. Yeah. I was talking about earlier how it kind of fascinates me, the Russian propaganda versus the American propaganda, because this fits very nicely and neatly into American propaganda is like those soulless Soviets, they don't like McDonald's and they break their necks for the

state when we're individuals and that kind of thing. But this has also happened to American gymnasts. There's a, oh, I'm forgetting her name, but she was an American gymnast, Olympic hopeful. She slipped, banged isn't really even the strong enough word. She hit her head against the beam, or sorry, the vault, and she went into a coma right away. There's a mistake at the hospital with her air and she was in a vegetative state and three years later she died. Oh my gosh, how horrible. These like, and that's, she's an American gymnast. Ulissa Gomez, born in 72, died in 91. Oh, that's too short. Yeah. Like you said, the stamina, the psychology of these elite level athletes is, it is insane. Yeah. The other thing that complicates Lena's story is that this is at

the time of the, of the Soviet kind of like, we are strong, we are together, of course, we're gold medal winners, da, da, da. And yes, they did their best to try and cover up the story. Yeah, I was thinking maybe that might happen. So it happened during a practice, a closed practice. There was no, no media there, no other people. So the Western media wasn't sure what happened. They had heard that there was an injury, but they were like, oh, she slipped on the uneven bars and she broke her leg or, you know, because that had already happened. So maybe something like that. And so they weren't sure and there's a lot of varying reports coming out. And even the head of the Soviet national gym, Yuri Titov, he came on TV and addressed claims about the

rumor and he said, no, this is all bad, bad rumors. She, she didn't make the team. So she's not competing. She's too old. She, you know, she was 20 at the time. Oh my God. Throwing this poor young woman under the bus. Totally. Yeah. And she has a lot of really interesting stuff to say about this, because after this, she's of course in the hospital, but then they let her go. She goes back home to her grandmothers in Moscow, who take her grandmother takes care of her. She is quadriplegic, but she has some, so from like the neck down, she can't move, though she has some slight movement in her elbows and some tendons in her forearms. But she says of that time, I got so used to conquering myself. I don't want to, I'm scared, I mustn't eat, I mustn't drink. That in the first years after

the injury, when all I could do was lie around, it seemed weird that nothing was required of me. So I needed those feelings of having some sort of control. So I began to starve myself for no reason at all to torture myself out of habit. Oh, oh my love. So she's obviously having a really, really hard time. And to make matters even worse, because the Russian news on the event is never very clear, you know, she aged out, she blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, people are sending her letters constantly, being like, why, why are you competing? Please, we love you. You are a hero. And that just like all she wanted at that point was to be left alone. And she understood that those people were being deceived. They were being told something that was not true. So she

didn't have it out for them. But she just thought this is, if I can hate this, this is the worst. This better end as like a thriller where she kill bills her way through like the uprash lawns of Moscow until she reaches the top. I know, right? I love that. That's the movie. The director, former director of the Soviet women's gymnastics. Her name is Larissa Latnina. She had some things to say about this that she shared with the press long after. It wasn't until Gorbachev came in power that any of the rushing reporting really revealed what had happened to Lena. But this former director said Lena's leg hurt insanely and her coach forced her to work. I always say to my gymnast, if something hurts a gymnast, do not force it because it will come

back to haunt. Some say it is necessary to teach a child to work through pain, suddenly it will turn out so it will be necessary to perform with pain. Sorry, the translation was a little murky. That's okay. But she's asked this director, if she'd ever perform with pain, she says, I have performed with pain, but I would never train with pain. There's no point in training with pain, which I think is a really good careful distinction when it comes to this high-level athlete because I'm sure a lot of that shit is painful. How could it not be? Following her accident, Lena was awarded by the Soviet Union the Order of the Bags of Honor in response to her injury. But that was kind of following the line of, oh, she got injured and it was kind of her fault,

but here's the medal for you anyway. There was no reporting on her coach, no reporting on the doctors. It's a pittance. She was, however, also awarded in 1983 by the Olympic Committee, the Olympic Order. There's kind of rankings of this award, but this one that she got is the highest one. And it's usually reserved for presidents of the Olympic Committee, kind of more the pinnacle of this award because all the athletes get the medals, right? But Elena gets this special one. And remember, she never competed in the Olympics. She never got a chance to. So to be awarded this very elite medal from the Olympic Order was really sweet. And the guy who awarded it to her, who was the IOC president, his name was Juan Samaranch. And apparently he came to visit her

more than once. He was good friends with her. And so at least that's really sweet. And like how I mentioned, she had some slight movement in her arms. She took the time and I'm sure an incredible amount of effort to hand write a note to the IOC president thanking him for her award. Damn. He better have framed that. Yeah. It's not the best handwriting. Cut the woman a fucking break. But it's the best handwriting. No, not the best handwriting, but it is the best handwriting if you think about this one. In the letter, she writes, Dear Mr. Samaranch, thank you for the honor you have given me in awarding me the Olympic Order. It was the best New Year's greeting. Elena Mukina. Short to the point. Love it. Yep. Getting get out. Yeah. Lena lived in Moscow.

She actually did a little bit of writing, not handwriting, but some reporting writing. She gave very limited interviews because again, she didn't really want to be in the limelight. All the news was so confusing. She didn't want to have to explain. She did feel that the doctors had wronged her and that her coach was not responsible. But... Which I agree with. Yeah, exactly. But she didn't really seem to have much of a vendetta. She just was bummed. Yeah, as you would be. So she passed away in 2006 with complications caused by her quadriplea. And she's how old? She was 46. Oh, so young. Pretty young. But she lived with this quadriplea for 26 years for most of her life. Yeah, that's true. But that is one of many

gnarly Olympic gymnastics stories. Yeah, Christ. There's a, what's it called? There's a final destination that has one of these as one of the deaths. Oh, God. I think it taps into some sort of like mercurial, our bodies aren't meant to do that fear. Yeah. Because sometimes it turns out that no, your body was not supposed to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. At least not now. You know what I mean? Yeah. I never know quite what to say when we have a story that ends on a little bit of a sad note and there's not really any kind of resolution there. I guess there was in a sense. Yeah. I mean, what I keep thinking about is the Simone Biles question too of like, should you limit certain techniques and certain skills because it because they're dangerous if performed by anybody other

than Simone Biles basically. Yeah. Yeah. And that does not seem at all fair to Simone Biles, but then it seems very fair to somebody who might be in this situation whose coaches and doctors are saying, well, Simone Biles, but gosh, I don't know. Simone Biles is such a whole other level that I would hope that there's no program out there that would be saying, hey, you need to be like Simone Biles. Like we were saying before, when someone does something, you got to top it and top it and top it and top it and top it. Yeah. And that becomes dangerous at a point. I got that too. Yeah. It's pretty wild. I am so non competitive. Yeah. I'm competitive, but until they make gay dodgeball in Olympic sport, I'm probably not going to be going that hard training. Taylor,

can you do any cool gymnastics? Can do a cartwheel. I used to be able to do a front flip and land on my feet. What? I never could do a back. Yeah. I never could do, I used to like, used to, used to, like last time I did, I was probably a young teenager, but I used to be able to do it. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. Pretty much cartwheels. Cool. How about you? Oh, right. I remember, US, you did the old, uh, that could have been way worse knowing what we know now. Oh man, way worse. Totally. Yeah. I thought, I thought I had it wrong. Yeah. If it is an affirmative note, such as it is, like you said, the woman lived for how, how 26 years as a quadriplegic and maybe that goes to show that like having a disability can pose a lot of challenges, but it's not a death sentence. Many

people have disabilities and live. Yeah. And I think it gave her the opportunity to really not do gymnastics. Yeah. There's that one. But, and I think also for a lot of officials and the gymnastics world to kind of take, take note, you know, and really, and really pay attention to what, what those athletes are going through. And what they're telling you they're going through. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Man, listen to your body. Yeah. Listen to your body. Oh, I thought I was going to burp right then. That would have been really good, but I'm really, I'm really, no, it wouldn't have, I would have. Thanks for tuning in. If you want more infamy, go to bittersweetinfamy.com or search for us wherever you find podcasts. We usually release new episodes every other Sunday. You can also

follow us on Instagram at bittersweetinfamy. If you liked the show, consider subscribing, leaving a review or just telling a friend. Stay sweet. The sources that I used for this story were the Wikipedia page devoted to Elena Mugina. Also, I read an article titled Legendary Larissa Latinina, the grandmother who took care of the bedridden Elena Mugina now lies next to her, published on Gordon.com. The article Elena Mugina Grown-Up Games published in Ogonyok Magazine. It's an interview conducted by Oksana Polonskaya with Elena Mugina herself. And the interview is translated by Beth Squires. I read two articles written by Mike Davis, published on the blog Old School Gymnastics.

The first article was titled shortly after her paralysis, Elena Mugina wrote a letter, published in October 2019. The second article, After Her Injury, a Soviet cover-up hurt Elena Mugina even more, published February 2020. I took a look at the Tokyo 2020 page for artistic gymnastics. And lastly, I watched the 1991 A&E documentary, More Than a Game, Women's Gymnastics. The song you are now listening to is Tea Street by Brian Steele.