“To win the competition, my rival broke my right leg and called me a ‘loser.’ But she couldn’t even imagine what I would do in response to such cruelty.
There were only ten minutes left before my performance.
I was calmly changing in the dressing room, adjusting my tutu, tying my pointe shoes, and mentally running through the entire dance from beginning to end. My teacher and I had been preparing for this competition for almost a whole year. Every day there were long training sessions, stretching, rehearsals until late evening, and work on every little detail.
— Today you must show everything you’ve learned, — my teacher said before leaving the dressing room. — I’m sure victory will be yours.
I smiled and nodded.
For the first time in a long while, I truly felt confident. Everything was perfectly ready, and it seemed to me that today no one could stop me.
But at that moment, the dressing room door swung open. My main rival walked in.
She had participated in almost every competition alongside me. Every time she tried to hurt me, made snide jokes, laughed at my mistakes, and constantly repeated that I would never become the best.
She slowly approached me and with a contemptuous smile looked me straight in the eyes.
— Well then, loser, ready to lose? — she asked mockingly.
I calmly held her gaze.
— No. Today I will be the one to win. I’ve prepared such a dance that all the judges’ votes will be mine.
Her face instantly changed.
The smile disappeared, and genuine anger appeared in her eyes.
— So that’s how it is…
She suddenly pushed me hard with both hands.
I lost my balance and fell to the floor. I didn’t even have time to get up when she sharply stepped on my right leg with her pointe shoe.
I screamed in pain.
She didn’t remove her foot — on the contrary, she pressed down harder and harder.
At some point, I heard an unpleasant crunch.
The pain became so intense that my vision went dark.
I tried to push her away with my hands, but she just sneered.
— Now let’s see how you win.
With those words, she turned around and calmly walked out of the dressing room, as if nothing had happened.
I remained lying on the floor, barely holding back tears.
My rival thought she had already won, but she couldn’t even imagine how her cruel act would end. (I told the second part of my story in the first comment.)
A few minutes later, the organizers and doctors arrived.
After examining my leg, they immediately said I wouldn’t be able to perform.
I was taken to the hospital, and the competition continued without me.
Lying in the ward, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened.
It wasn’t just the fracture that hurt.
What tormented me most was the thought that a person could deliberately destroy someone else’s dream for the sake of victory.
But I wasn’t going to give up.
When I had recovered a little, I asked the organizers to preserve the footage from the security cameras near the dressing rooms.
It turned out that the entire corridor and the entrance to the dressing room were under constant video surveillance.
The recording clearly showed my rival entering before the performance, and then calmly leaving alone a few minutes later.
When the staff reviewed the footage completely, they also saw the moment of the attack.
She hadn’t even noticed the small camera installed inside the dressing room for the participants’ safety.
Every word she said could be heard on the video.
— Now let’s see how you win.
The next day, the recording was shown to the competition management and all the jury members.
The judges immediately reached a unanimous decision.
She was disqualified on the spot.
But that wasn’t the end of it.
The video quickly spread among the teachers of the country’s largest ballet academies.
Within a few weeks, almost all prestigious theaters and schools refused to invite her for auditions.
No one wanted to work with someone who was ready to cripple others for the sake of victory.
And a few months later, the competition organizers contacted me. They said they had carefully reviewed the recordings of my rehearsals, which I had sent in advance for the selection process.
Based on those videos, the jury decided to award me a special prize for the best performance of the competition program — the very one I never got to show on stage.
When I received that award, I was already able to walk again after a long rehabilitation.
That day I understood one simple thing. She broke my leg, hoping to take my victory away. But in the end, she only broke her own career.”
