World Gymnastics Championships : Soviets Add 6 More Gold Medals to Their Haul

Soviets Elena Shoushounova and Oksana Omeliantchik, who shared the gold medal in the all-around Saturday night, each picked up one more individual gold medal Sunday in the apparatus finals of the World Gymnastics Championships.

Earlier Sunday, Soviets Valentin Mogilnyi and all-around champion Yuri Korolev won two gold medals each in the men’s apparatus finals.

The victories by the four gymnasts from the two world champion teams pushed the total number of gold medals won by the Soviet Union during the seven-day competition to 11. The Soviets also won three silver medals and two bronzes.

Next biggest-winning nation during the championships was East Germany, which won 10 medals, including two gold.

China picked up three gold medals in the men’s apparatus finals Sunday to push its total number of medals won to seven. All were earned by the men’s silver medalist team.

Olympic all-around silver medalist Ecaterina Szabo won two silver apparatus medals and her teammate Daniela Silivas the gold on floor exercise to give Romania’s silver-medalist team a total of four medals.

The United States, which won the men’s gold and women’s silver as well as numerous individual medals at the L.A. Olympics, was shut out in the world championships at Montreal’s Velodrome. The Americans’ best finish were the women’s sixth-place finish and a tie for sixth place on vault Sunday by 15-year-old national champion Sabrina Mar of Monterey Park.

Meanwhile, Quebec provincial police revealed that they are investigating the disappearance of a member of one of the teams competing in the championships.

“What we have . . . is privileged information as to the fact that among the athletes or athlete’s delegation that one person is missing,” police spokesman Ronald Brunet said in an interview. “There was no official report made on it.

“Nobody filed a complaint about the disappearance of this person.

“The only thing we can effectively say (is that) we have got somebody missing from one of the delegations.”

Police received a request on Nov. 1 to investigate the disappearance of a member of one of the teams, he said.

On Sunday, a local newspaper, Dimanche-Matin, identified the missing person as a Bulgarian athlete. The newspaper said the individual had not yet asked for political asylum.