Irina Viner-Usmanova continues her personal war with the judges: after the Averina sisters lost the fight for the gold in the world championship in the exercise with the ribbon to the Belarusian Alina Gornosko, the President of the Russian Federation of Rhythmic Gymnastics told TASS that the situation, in her opinion, completely repeats the Olympic one - that what happened at the Tokyo Games and as a result of which Olympic gold in the all-around was won not by Dina Averina, but by the Israeli Lina Ashram.

Public quarrels with referees in such a subjective sport as rhythmic gymnastics (this also includes gymnastics, diving and all those disciplines where real people give marks) is an extremely thankless job, because it always has fairly predictable consequences.

Those who get the right to work in the refereeing teams at the Games and World Championships, as a rule, have vast experience and the highest professional qualifications.

Simply put, people know their worth and are not ready to allow anyone to wipe their feet publicly.

I absolutely do not exclude, by the way, that the refereeing of the Averin sisters in the exercise with the ribbon is tougher than we would like - echoes of those very events.

In addition, the scandalous situation in Tokyo was repeatedly sorted out by all and sundry.

But if journalists did it, so to speak, out of love for art, then the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) was simply obliged to conduct its own investigation - this is required by the internal rules of any international sports organization.

Especially in a situation where such a weighty piece of filth is publicly thrown on the reputation of judges.

I'm not even talking about the fact that Viner-Usmanova is too authoritative and influential in gymnastics circles to not listen to her opinion.

It is difficult to admit the likelihood of biased refereeing just two months after the main scandal of the Games, even with a very unrestrained flight of imagination: on the part of any sane judge, this would mean voluntarily putting his head under the ax.

And where?

At the championship, which was ignored by the Olympic champions and which by and large takes place this season in the category of a minor tournament.

Irina Aleksandrovna cannot fail to understand all that has been said above - the very fact of such an admission is insulting for a professional of this rank.

In the same way, the head coach of the Russian national team cannot but understand the groundlessness of his claims against the chairman of the FIG referee technical committee Natalya Kuzmina.

In the course of the Olympic Games, we recall, the latter was presented with claims for the fact that she failed to defend Russian interests (read, to ensure that the gold in Tokyo was won by Averina, not Ashram).

But on this score, in all international federations without exception, there is a strict rule: as soon as a person is elected to a particular post, he becomes, first of all, a representative of the federation, and not of a separate country.

Any deviation from this rule is nothing more than a national addiction, and can be punished in a rather harsh way.

On September 19, Viner-Usmanova officially confirmed that Russia would not nominate the disgraced arbitrator for re-election (the FIG congress will be held on November 6 in Antalya).

In other words, with the removal of Kuzmina, our country is completely deprived of judicial representation at the world level, and this, although narrowly professional and not too noticeable to others, is a very serious blow to the national image.

Accordingly, there is no reason to believe that in another four years Russia will be able to put “its” candidate back in the chair, as Viner-Usmanova stated in one of her interviews.

And this is another point that Irina Alexandrovna was obliged to foresee when, not without her efforts, the scandal in Japan was inflated.

It's time to ask the question: what will follow all this? At best, our country will simply lose some of its authority and this will not even hit the Averin sisters, who have already won the maximum they were capable of in gymnastics, but those who will replace them. At worst, it is entirely possible that one of the current bosses of the International Olympic Committee will sooner or later ask the Olympic public a question: do we need a source of continuous squabbles and scandals in the Olympic program? How easy it can be to lose Olympic status, we all saw a few years ago, when Greco-Roman wrestling retained its position with colossal difficulty.

It is possible not to take all the listed points into account, probably, only in one case: when a decision has already been made to retire, but for some reason I really want to finally slam the door so that the world shudders.

I just don't want to believe in such an option at all.

It is impossible, after all, to live according to the principle "there is even a flood after us."

Or is it possible?

I have no answer to this question.