In this 1990 interview, Yuri Titov — the long-serving president of the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) — speaks not of glamour or privilege but of long hours in meeting rooms, piles of documents, and the constant struggle to keep the sport fair. Early injustices in his own career, he recalls, convinced him that “athletes must be led by athletes.” As FIG president, he turned that conviction into policy: revising the federation’s statutes to curb presidential power, creating twelve commissions to share decision-making, and championing more objective judging through mathematical analysis and a standardized six-judge system. He even proposed sanctioning entire federations for corruption on the competition floor. Balancing the competing demands of his country, the FIG, and its member organizations was never easy — especially in a political culture where, as Titov recalls with wry humor, a senior Soviet sports official once warned him that if he didn’t “work for the benefit of the Soviet Union,” he might “fall ill for a long time.” Yet Titov managed to navigate those pressures and the politics of world gymnastics for two decades.
