NEW YORK • A culture in gymnastics that has tolerated coaches belittling, manipulating and, in some cases, physically abusing young athletes, is being challenged by Olympians and other gymnasts around the world after an uprising in the United States.
Many current and former competitors, emboldened by their American peers, have broken their silence in recent weeks against treatment they say created mental scars on girls that lasted well into adulthood.
At a time when the Tokyo Olympics would be in session had the event not been postponed to next year by the Covid-19 pandemic, gymnasts have been sharing horrific stories of coaches body-shaming them, stifling their emotions, using corporal punishment and forcing them to train with injuries, using the pursuit of medals to rationalise shameful behaviour.
Chloe Gilliland, 29, a former member of the Australian national team, recalled her coaches telling her that she was "a bad child" and "a danger" to her own body because she was too heavy.
At 17, she thought of killing herself because, she said on Instagram, "I felt like it was easier to end my own life than to give in to what they wanted me to be."
Catherine Lyons, 19, once a top junior competitor for Britain, said coaches would hit her and harass her about her weight, and when she was seven or eight, she would cry so hard that coaches would shut her inside a cupboard until she composed herself.
Later, she said, she learned she had post-traumatic stress disorder because of the treatment.
She told ITV News: "I wasn't worth anything. I wasn't a human. I was a commodity rather than a child." Other gymnasts have simply said on social media: "I am one of them."
The stories from gymnasts in all levels of the sport are part of a coordinated effort, similar to the #MeToo movement, calling for the sport's leaders to eradicate existing norms that are not normal at all.
"I was told many times that gymnasts should be seen and not heard because the sport is all about being the good little gymnast," said Lisa Mason, a British Olympian at the Sydney 2000 Games and among the gymnasts to speak out recently.
The 38-year-old said her coaches threw shoes at her and scratched her when she did not perform perfectly. Once she was made to stay on the uneven bars until her hands were blistered and ripped, only for a coach to pin her hands down and pour rubbing alcohol into her raw wounds, she added.
Looking back, Mason called the atmosphere "insane," especially because gymnasts who start training seriously at a very young age are often left alone with coaches.
"So many of us are done with normalising the abuse that we were told was needed to make champions," she said. "We want change, and it's incredible that so many of us are coming together to demand it."
National gymnastics federations in Britain, Australia, the Netherlands and Belgium have begun investigations or requested inquiries into alleged abuse, with the Dutch federation saying it would suspend its women's national team programme as it looked for answers.
Briton Jennifer Pinches, who competed at the London 2012 Games, said this recent global push to change the sport was sparked by Netflix documentary Athlete A. It depicts the harrowing training of American elite gymnasts and the cover-ups that surrounded USA Gymnastics' sexual abuse scandal involving its long-time team doctor, Larry Nassar.
"It was a tipping point that enabled this movement to happen," said Pinches who, after seeing the film, persuaded more than 30 British gymnasts, including Mason, to post a joint statement on social media condemning "the culture that didn't put athlete health and well-being first and allowed Nassar to act". The group used the hashtag #GymnastAlliance and, since then, there have been more than 700 posts on Instagram alone.
Back in the United States, Jennifer Sey, a 1986 national champion and one of the producers of Athlete A, was stunned the film prompted so many athletes to come forward about their experiences, especially when athletes had so many previous chances to speak up.
In the last 25 years, there have been several books about abuse in the sport, including one by Sey in 2008. There also were Nassar's sentencing hearings in 2018, during which more than 150 girls and women testified, eventually leading to his life sentence in jail.
In April, Maggie Haney, who coached Olympian Laurie Hernandez, was suspended for eight years by USA Gymnastics for verbally abusing and mistreating athletes.
It was among the first times - if not the first - that a top American coach had been punished for that kind of abuse and gymnasts are seeing this year as a perfect time to bring worldwide change to non-sexual abuse in the sport.
"This time, you can't say the accusations are against just one bad apple, one bad coach or one bad system, and then dismiss them," Sey said. "A lot of these women who came forward continued to suffer because of their coaches' cruel treatment, and they don't want to suffer any more. They don't want future generations to suffer, either."
NYTIMES
