Visiting Journalist Says Sports Coverage in Soviet Union ‘Always Has Been Open’

Vladimir Gheskim, a Soviet sports journalist who has worked for Sovietsky Sport for 15 years, said Friday that the open policies of glasnost have not affected coverage of Soviet athletics.

“In covering sports, it always has been open,” he said during a tour of Orange County with a Soviet volleyball delegation. “What can be secret when a team plays another team?”

But the American media made much of a report last November by Sovietsky Sport, a sports publication, that focused on drug problems in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk. The article, according to Western foreign correspondents, was a rare disclosure of drug violations by Soviet athletes.

Gheskim, however, said that the use of anabolic steroids, muscle-building agents banned by the International Olympic Committee, have been widely discussed in the Soviet media for many years.

Gheskim said that the publication is currently writing about the problems of Soviet athletes facing life after sports.

“It’s a problem for us,” he said. “There must be assurances that all athletes can live like other people after their playing days end. It’s been a big discussion in the press.”