Svetlana Khorkina: The movie

"Wouldn't you like to watch?" asks Sveta, archly, tossing her newly printed Russian Playboy centerfold under his nose. She punctuates the gesture by crushing out her cigarette on the arm of a couch.

"Sveta!" he shrieks, crossing himself, shielding his eyes from her topless photo.

"What, you don't like to see it? Then you are not a man," she warbles. The gruff coach storms out of the room, just as she rips the gown off her body with her strong, tiny arms. She looks at herself naked in the mirror, at her tall, impossibly thin, muscular frame, and addresses one of her minions, a younger gymnast. "I am beautiful, yes, Olga?"

"Yes, Sveta," says the frightened child, biting a splinter out of her palm. "I am going to always be win," says Sveta, forcing a diamond earring stud through her own nipple, unflinchingly, and giving herself a smile of assurance.

Later that night in the competition, Sveta advances to the parallel bars -- her strongest event -- but, after several mind-boggling swoops through the air, misses the bar and falls miserably onto her knees. She stands on the mat, humiliated, her sequined leotard torn at one shoulder, rivulets of body glitter streaking down her cheeks along with her tears.

"As Jesus is watch me, I will never, never," she growls, clenching her fists, "never let one of those little bitch win me at the event again, as long as I am alive. I will eat her face."

Thunderous music. The crowd applauds for Sveta despite her terrible failure. Sveta beats her breast and bites her cheek hard enough to enable her to spit blood at the audience, cursing them all in Russian: "May you have four generations of harelipped children!"

One of Sveta's young protigis wins a separate event, against her. Crying with joy, the younger girl runs to Sveta for approval. Sveta whispers: "Go away from me and die, you tiny whore." She smiles and hugs the confused girl for the cameras.

Later, back in the camp dormitory, Sveta heats up the girl's medal in the fireplace and makes her hold it in her hand, crying, until her skin smokes from the burning.

"You never beat me again," hisses Sveta.

"No, Sveta, never," whimpers the child.

Sveta sneaks out that night with her new paramour, one of Moscow's motorcycle-riding black-market thugs, his mouth full of gold teeth.

Cut to her later that night in a jealous, drunken fury, waving a pork chop with one hand and half a bottle of vodka in the other, shouting, "Nobody fucking will win me again!!!"

She throws the meat and drink on the ground with a smash and leaps onto a nearby statue to do a triple aerial. While landing, she slips in her stiletto heels on the cobblestones, and hits her head right next to a broken children's toy. She flashes back to the fateful day when her gymnastics career began.

"Papa," she says weakly.

"What is it, Sveta?" asks Vitoly, the swarthy black-market brute.

"Nothing. Let us go make sex into an alley!"

The two zoom off on his motorcycle. Montage of unbelievably contortionistic sex, combined with other rebellious actions. Svetlana, trying to jump the Volga River in an imported Ford Fiesta, crashing. Svetlana attending a state ceremony and doing a series of flips down an aisle lined with elderly dignitaries, wearing no underwear. Finally, Boris, in abject exasperation, throws her against the wall. She spits in his face.

"Sveta!" he shouts. "Don't you see? You are symbol of hope for the Russian people." Svetlana's eyes fill with tears.

"I am a symbol of hope," she repeats, bewildered. The film concludes with footage of her stunning victory at the Sydney Olympics, with Svetlana lip-syncing a Mariah Carey power jam ballad while performing her floor exercise.

Fade to red. Fade-in title: "The End?"

For contract details, please contact my agent, George Lane, at the William Morris Agency.

Sincerely yours, Cintra Wilson

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