I love the sport of gymnastics. I can’t say enough good things about it. Unfortunately there is a dark side to this sport too. I hope that most young athletes don’t have to go through what I did, but I am sorry to say that too many of them did.
I am talking about the pressure to maintain an ideal body type. Our culture begins this lesson pretty early. Most of the time sports are a positive way to instill self-esteem and a healthy attitude towards food and fitness.
My experience, although not uncommon, is usually prevalent in kids that pursue this sport to a high level. Let’s face it, gymnastics is a difficult sport if you are tall, overweight or past a certain age. It is similar to ballet in the pressure of staying thin and overtrained.
It was all fun and games until I was about 14 years old. I wanted to improve my skills and possibly win a college scholarship. I knew I wasn’t going to the Olympics, but there was still a lot more the sport could offer me.
I knew of a club that had an excellent reputation. The coach was a Russian man with charisma and a winning formula. He chose only 4 girls to his elite team each year. You had to work your way up his various teams and then maybe you might be chosen one of the fortunate 4. I happened to make his team and I was beyond happy with my success.
There is no other way to describe being coached by this man than to say it was abusive. He was a clever man and had some serious problems around young girls. I will save his more criminal acts for another time. I suppose I got off easy because his special attention for me was limited to his sadistic mind games and dissecting of my physical flaws. And trust me when I say I got off easy.
There was zero tolerance for being “fat.” And to determine if you were fat, we were asked to line up in our leotards and he would walk the line and tell us what was wrong with our bodies. As a 15-year-old girl, this wreaked havoc on my self-esteem. Enter the eating disorder. It starts out as a diet to lose a few pounds, or as my coach would point out the fat that jiggles when you do a round off that is unacceptable.
By 17 I was a mess. I would go 3 days on a can of soup and practices that lasted 4-6 hours. It finally came to an end with a dislocated elbow and broken wrist that cost me 2 surgeries and a year in a cast. The end of my gymnastics career.
Where were my parents during all of this? Like the other 3 girls on my team, we never told our parents that this was going on. It is hard to imagine, but there is a sickness that goes into protecting your abuser. We were perfectionist and willing to pay the price to be the best. Plus we were no matches for a cunning adult that used kids.
Of course the eating disorder was not ignored. It was common to see this in my sport and I received medical attention. I was never hospitalized. The threat of that and possibly missing practice had me eating again.
I would like to say this guy is in jail, but honestly I don’t know. He deserves to be and I hope that if there is fairness in this world, he is.
After! 
