Women's gymnastics is
a fantastic sport. It's beautiful, dramatic, it expands your awareness of what
the human body can do. The athletes are remarkably powerful, precise, and
determined. The competitions are full of twists and turns, the results are seldom
known until the last competitor lands their dismount.
As a spectator and a
fan, there is no sport more exciting.
But for decades, the
sport has harboured many dark secrets. Across the world, gymnastics has
provided homes and security for paedophiles, child abusers, and blatant
profiteering off children.
Recently, and
prominently, this was exposed in the structure of USA gymnastics, when it
turned out that they had hidden... well, I hardly know where to start?
Paedophile/Doctor Larry Nassar, who pled guilty to abusing seven children, and
was sentenced to over a century in prison for their assaults, as well as those perpetrated
on… deep breath, at least 250 others. The scale of that alone is mind-numbing.
What is worse, is that various people within USAG, and other institutions, knew
(or should have known) about the abuse, and failed to investigate or take any
action at all.
Then there’s John
Geddert. The 2012 Olympic coach and close friend of Nassar, who took his own
life rather than face accusations of human trafficking and criminal sexual
conduct.
How about Maggie Haney?
The coach of several National Team members over the years, who was suspended
from coaching in USAG gyms after an investigation into the emotional and verbal
abuse of gymnasts.
The US isn’t alone in
having problems with abuse related to the sport, though. Oh no.
Belgium. The
Netherlands. Romania. Australia.
And, our main subject
today, Great Britain.
Before we get any
further, I want to say that it’s important to remember that these are just the
countries where gymnasts have spoken out publicly about abuse. It’s likely that
there are other countries, under other governing bodies where these stories
have yet to see the light of day, due to ongoing abuse, fear of consequences,
or because the gymnasts who have survived this are not yet at a point where
they feel ready to make this public.
Telling a story of
abuse takes immense bravery, but no-one should ever feel pressured to tell their
truth until they are ready to do so.
Why is abuse so
prevalent in gymnastics?
Well, it’s a
complicated question, with a complicated answer.
Firstly, I think the average
age of gymnasts needs to be taken into account. For the past few decades, female
gymnasts have been considered to “peak” between the ages of 15 and 18.
Therefore, a very large proportion of gymnasts competing at the highest levels,
going to the Olympics and world championships, have been children. (The average
age of top gymnasts actually seems to be trending upwards at the moment,
hopefully a sign of better, healthier training practises).
Secondly, there’s the
“ideal gymnast”. For decades, the “ideal gymnast” has been short, thin,
pre-pubescent and compliant. Many coaches go to great lengths to ensure that
their students are “ideal gymnasts”, including obsessing over weight, labelling
gymnasts as “lazy” or “un-coachable” if they don’t comply, and dangerous
over-training. This kind of treatment can lead to athletes developing disordered
relationships with food, body dysmorphia, and make them more prone to injuries.
Thirdly, there’s the culture.
Gymnastics is ridiculously competitive. The Olympic teams this year comprise of
just four athletes, with each country having the opportunity to gain up to two
more spots for individual competitors by taking part in competitions in the last
couple of years. Often, the success of gyms, coaches and federations is tied up
in the success of their gymnasts. Have a gymnast go to the Olympics, and people
will come and ask you to coach their children. Have a gymnast win a medal, and
the national profile of the sport is raised, the governing body gets more funding,
more people enrol their children.
In short, vulnerable
children are put into high pressure situations, where adults around them rely
on their success to pay the bills.
Adding to all of
this, team gymnastics is a game of strategy, now more than ever. Last Olympics,
there were 5 gymnasts on each team. Before that, there were six, before that,
seven. This Olympics, there are only four gymnasts allowed in each team. The
competition will begin with a qualification round, where every gymnast will
compete on every apparatus, and three of those four scores will be totalled to
decide which teams get through to the final. Teams can decide to take
specialists, who only compete on 1, 2 or 3 pieces of apparatus, but this means
that if someone falls, they have to include that low score in their total. In
the final, only three gymnasts will compete, and all scores count.
National governing
bodies, therefore, need to look at the group of elite gymnasts vying for a
spot, and decide on the “best” team to use. Different federations will have different
approaches for this. Some will take multiple specialists, choosing to aim for
more individual medals, but risk counting falls in team qualifications. Others
would rather take four gymnasts who get good scores in the all-around, and
leave their specialists at home (or try to qualify them as individual gymnasts).
All of this means
that the gymnastics federations have difficult decisions to make, with massive
consequences for the gymnasts involved. Many gymnasts are scared that, if they
speak out, if they complain, if they upset their coaches and are labelled as “difficult”,
they will be shunned when it comes to team selections. Given the number of
possible team formations, it’s easy enough for national bodies to conceal
biases and prejudices under the guise of reasonable strategic decisions.
And so we get onto
the issue that made me write this blog post today.
British Gymnastics
today make its public announcement of the gymnasts who would be competing for GB
in Tokyo. The four gymnasts they named are all excellent. They absolutely
deserve their spot, and I look forward to seeing them all compete.
But although I was
pleased, I, and many others were… surprised. Because one gymnast who everyone
had expected to be named to the team, was missing from the list. Not on the
main team, not as an alternate.
Becky Downie has been
at the forefront of British Gymnastics for years. She is a previous Olympian, has
competed in many world championships through the years, and won GB’s most
recent world medal on her specialist event, Uneven Bars. This year, while
gearing up for the Olympics, she unveiled her latest bars routine, which would
be valued among the highest in the world. Barring mistake or injury, I think most
fans would have expected her to get into the bars final, an achievement in
itself, but also to challenge for a medal. She is tested in competition, she is
reliable, she executes everything she does fantastically, and performs to an
incredible level of difficulty.
The explanation given
as to why is fairly simple. Becky has been training uneven bars and balance
beam only. Were she to be part of the team, therefore, there would be only
three performers on vault and floor in the qualification round, leaving little
margin for error. Despite the massive gain that Becky can bring on bars and
beam, it’s still a reasonable strategy. If she brings 3-4 points on bars or
beam over the competitor that would likely replace her, but her team-mates fall
or, even worse, are injured and unable to complete their routines, the
potential point loss is much higher. In gymnastics, the higher the risk, the
higher the reward. Becky Downie would bring a massive reward, but there would
be an increased risk involved.
But that’s not the
whole story. Not at all.
To understand what
really happened here, we need to look back to 2019. In 2019, Becky Downie
competed with the British team in the Gymnastics World Championships. In doing
so, she ensured that GB would have a 4 person team representing the country in
Tokyo. A great triumph.
There was just one
problem. In taking part in this competition, the complicated qualification
rules meant that she was then precluded from attempting to gain an individual spot
at the Olympics. Without Becky’s scores, the team would still probably have
made the cut, but would have been dangerously close to missing out completely.
Without her, their position would have been far from certain.
Skip ahead to 2020.
After the release of a documentary discussing the handling of the Nassar
incident, many gymnasts around the world begun to speak out. Becky, and her
sister Ellie Downie, were among them. The pair released a document discussing
several instances of abuse throughout their career, including Becky alleging
that she was over-trained, despite stating that she felt that her health was at
risk. Soon after, she sustained an ankle injury that required surgery. In this
document, the sisters were fair, mentioning positive changes that had already occurred,
as well as discussing dangerous and ineffective practises that were still ongoing.
This should have been a moment for the governing body to sit back, think, and
reform, however it’s unclear to what extent that happened. An independent
review of abuse carried out within British Gymnastics is currently underway.
Now, to 2021. There
are multiple competitions taken into account when deciding who goes onto the
Olympic team. This culminates with the official team trials.
Shortly before the
trial was due to take place, however, Becky and Ellie suffered the devastating,
unexpected loss of their brother. I can’t even begin to comprehend how awful
this is, and, understandably, both sisters missed trials. Ellie later decided
to pull out of the race for the Olympics completely.
Becky was given an
opportunity to trial on her own several weeks later. The strength it must have
taken to get back into training so quickly is mind-boggling, and, amazingly
(despite having to compete on unfamiliar equipment), she executed excellent
routines on both bars and beam.
Soon afterwards,
however, she was told that she would not be on the team. She had a right to appeal,
which she exercised despite the deadline for appeals being placed on the day of
her brother’s funeral. Her appeal was rejected.
Finally, we get to
today. The official announcement. She has released a statement, expressing her
sadness at the fact that, despite the routines put together, despite her (very
real) medal chances, despite the personal adversity she overcame, she wasn’t
put on the team. Because she is a hero, she also made sure to express her support
and congratulations to those selected.
She also made it
clear that the rescheduled trial that she went through was deeply upsetting for
her. “I don’t think I’ll ever get over the experience”, she wrote in a twitter
post.
Clearly, this is a horrible
situation. To an extent, team selections often are. There are never enough
places on a team to include every gymnast who is good enough to compete, and
certainly not to include every gymnast who deserves to compete.
But I think there are
some clear errors in how this situation was handled, and I think maybe there
might be something to learn here.
In the end, I think
it all comes down to communication, and early planning. British Gymnastics has
had five years to plan for this Olympics. It should be up to them to decide
early on how they want to maximise their chances of team and individual medals.
If they suspected that they were going to choose four all-rounders for their
team, no matter what, they should have made this clear to every coach, every
gymnast, and, ideally, to the fans as well.
Why would this be
important? Well, firstly, because there are other ways of getting to the
Olympics. Had Becky been aware of this, she could have attempted to win a
nominative spot through the world cup competitions in 2019/2020. She would
actually have had a fairly good shot at placing at the top of the field of
gymnasts trying to qualify through this route. The only downside? She wouldn’t
be able to help GB qualify a team.
This seems to
introduce a conflict. BG had to prioritise qualifying a team. Having their best
gymnasts present for the 2019 World Championships would increase their chances
of doing this. Gymnasts attempting to qualify through the world cups would have
to choose not to attend Worlds.
In essence, that’s fine,
as long as gymnasts are well informed of the significance of their choices. Would
gymnasts choose to compete at worlds 2019 rather than try to qualify individually,
if they knew that there was no chance of them being placed on the Olympic team
anyway?
The second decision
that specialist gymnasts could have made, if they had been informed of BG’s
decision earlier, would be to begin to train all four apparatus. For some
gymnasts, obviously, there are old injuries, or other factors that make it
impossible to train a particular event. In the case of others, they make a
carefully thought-out decision to focus on their star piece or pieces,
concentrating their training time and fitness on mastering that event.
As recently as 2019,
Becky Downie had a competitive floor routine. It’s been a hot minute since she competed
vault, but she has been powerful on that event in the past.
If she, and her
coaches, had been told that she would likely need to compete on all four events
to have a shot at making the team, there is a chance that she could have adapted
her training schedule in order to achieve that. It’s likely that doing so would
have restricted the time she had to train on bars and beam, but she would likely
still have been world-class on both events. Even if she had competed very
watered-down floor and vault exercises, her excellent bars and beam would still
have justified her spot on the team. And even if this wasn’t possible, she
would at least have tempered her expectations accordingly.
Finally, if BG had
decided, even so recently as a month ago (when they invited Becky to her solo
trial), that they were not going to take a specialist, they could have told Becky
this, sparing her the distress of trying to compete so soon after her bereavement.
The conclusion we
have to come to is that, either BG failed to decide upon an Olympic team strategy
until literally a month before the team was announced (despite having nearly
five years to come up with a plan), or they knew what strategy they would use, decided
not to communicate this to the athletes, and made Becky believe that there was
a chance of her making the Olympics when they had already decided that there
wasn’t.
Fundamentally, it
doesn’t matter why Becky was treated in this way. Only two things matter.
Firstly, that at the heart of this is a brave, powerful woman who has already
shown so much strength, and now has to deal with this awful situation as well.
Becky is a role model to many, and it’s clear that she is handling this with remarkable
grace. I hope that she takes the time she needs to recover, and that some resolution
for this can be found for her.
Secondly, it’s important
to think about the message that this sends. BG is an organisation racked with
problems. Accusations of bias, abuse, unhealthy standards are not new to this organisation.
What does it say about such an organisation, when a gymnast who spoke out about
the abuse she had survived, is treated in this way?
And the problem is,
gymnastics is a sport where abuse is rife. Gymnastics is a sport where, historically,
gymnasts have been punished for speaking out about abuse. So many elite
gymnasts are inherently vulnerable, due to their age, due to their training
conditions.
Gymnastics is a sport
that needs to change. How does that happen?
Change comes when
gymnasts are allowed to speak. If you look at US gymnasts now, the change from
a few years ago is remarkable. Gymnasts are looking to their role-models, to
Simone Biles, to Aly Raisman, to Laurie Hernandez, and they are seeing them demanding
better. They are seeing them arguing that gymnasts should be allowed to listen
to their bodies. They are seeing living proof that their careers don’t have to
end after just a few years at the top due to over-training related injuries.
They are hearing that they have a right not to be shouted at. Not to be beaten.
Not to be publicly weighed, and criticised based on the number on the scale.
The change isn’t
complete, but it’s there. It’s started. The same change needs to take over
British Gymnastics.
Therefore, right now,
BG needs to open its ears, and listen to its gymnasts. Making a gymnast compete
shortly after a bereavement, then denying them a place on the Olympic team despite
their excellent performance… it makes people think that BG are trying to punish
Becky from speaking out. It might make other athletes unwilling to talk about
their experiences.
At this point, it
doesn’t even matter whether it’s true or not. Mistakes have clearly been made,
in how BG handled the abuse accusations in the first place, and in the way in
which they’ve handled this team selection. The perceptions held by the public,
and by gymnasts, coaches and parents under the organisation, will influence how
they behave. If abusive coaches believe that the organisation will back them,
they will continue to be abusive. If gymnasts are frightened that their complaints,
their testimony will lead to them being kept off teams, they will not speak
out. If women that have trained their whole lives, that have competed and won
medals for their country can’t trust the organisation they represent to be
honest with them, they will leave the sport.
It’s time for change.
The doors have to be thrown open. Procedures have to be made clear, long in advance
of this kind of decision being made. Gymnasts deserve to be treated like
people, not as money-making machines.
I hope that the
gymnasts involved, and the community as a whole, can use this as an opportunity
to support each other, and to challenge British Gymnastics to be better.
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