Any former gymnasts or parents of gymnasts our there?

[PurpleRiverIsland]

news.sky.com/story/british-gymnastics-claims-athletes-beaten-into-submission-amid-culture-of-fear-12022525

I witnessed and was victim of a lot of physical and emotional abuse when I was an elite gymnast at 3 different clubs and from 4 different coaches. I know some of the clubs these girls (speaking out in the media) went to and I’m not surprised at all about the allegations.

I’m wondering how prolific it was. What were your experiences of the sport?

YABU - I was/am involved in gymnastics and have never seen anything untoward

YANBU - I was/am involved in gymnastics and I witnessed physical or emotional abuse.

Please comment too if you would like to share your experiences.

@andannabegins I always wondered if men’s gymnastics is better because they tend to be older. Whether that would make them more able to stand up for themselves I don’t know. I saw a couple of MAG on twitter alluding to issues there too this week though.

it does make you wonder though if other sports are just as abusive... kids sports is serious stuff for those that have talent and if gymnasts hide it, so will other sports...

Not at the same level. Andanna explains it well.

I think the big problem with gymnastics is the level they teach at such a young age. Little children competing at a level that usually adults would get to. They trust grown ups as they would do

In gymnastics you either make it or are too old by about 12 or 13. So the power balance is off. There is also the fact that gymnastics is scary. New moves are terrifying sometimes. Someone else mentioned that they make you more scared of the coach than you are of the move.

Dh did not experience any of this in the sport that he did. (And BIL competed at an even higher level and won a Commonwealth medal and agrees.) Fuck ton of politics but no abuse.

Having said that - competitive sport is brutal. There is no getting away from it. Dd is very talented at another sport. An endurance sport. From the age of 8 she has been quite willing to push herself so hard that she vomits if she has to to win. There is something slightly abnormal in her that basically doesn’t seem to properly register pain or exhaustion during a competition - she just goes harder. I don’t know what to do as a parent - am I a good parent taking her to do the sports that she loves. And she does love it. Begs to do more training, more competitions. But I’m basically allowing her to torture herself.

My daughters were gymnasts around 12- 15 years ago. They absolutely loved the sport and trained 12+ hours a week, county level etc. It was brutal. DD2 (age 6) wet herself while doing competitive leg lifts because she was too scared to go ask to go to the loo. It was horrific. They were humiliated and abused routinely.

I don't think all clubs are like that, theirs was 'old school' - I took them away because I couldn't take the abuse and its effect on them, but DD2 in particular really mourned for the club and the sport for a long time.

This is awful to hear. I reached a high level through school gymnastics (represented county and region went to national school championships). We never had any issues of abuse it was run by a fierce but very protective and supportive gym teacher. I wanted to go to clubs but parents couldn’t afford to send me which now sounds like a lucky escape.

All too familiar, DD now retired from gym approx 1 year. We left a gym due to hideous behaviour from the owners down.
Was not all coaches and new club she went to was great.
The problem is that you have to be very tough to get to elite levels, training many hours a day most days.

You are taught from day 1, that during to the dangers in the sport, discipline is tight and obeying the coach is key. Which is correct, however, some coaches cross that line.
To make it in the sport, you have to be training long and hard from a really young age. The kids make huge sacrifices as they love the sport its adrenalin fueled, not replicated in many other sports.
My dd lived and breathed gym, still does even though no longer competing.
The mental scars will take a long time to heal, and we must remember that these kids did not realise how much was wrong until much older. It was what happened in the gym, it was normalised. I'd pick her up after a session and asked how it went, and it would always be yeah fine.
As parents we were actively discouraged from discussing gymnastics with the kids as that was 'putting too much pressure on them', we didnt need to worry, they had trained coaches who knew what they were doing....... .
It's sad and I hope we now see reform and change, let there be positivity for the next generation of gymnasts.

[quote PurpleRiverIsland]@june2007 well your just lovely aren’t you! Accusing parents of colluding in their own child’s abuse is quite frankly the lowest thing I’ve ever seen on Mumsnet. you should be ashamed of yourself[/quote]
Yeah but you thought “ great hobby with a potential for my child to be special.”
Or did you think the relentless training was a positive childhood experience ( if they wanted to make money from the sport).

@wingingit987 your story reminded me. my friend broke her foot and was crying on floor. Coach said ‘Well that was stupid!’ and told us all to leave the gym and go home (it was end of training) . Her brother came into the empty gym and carried her out as she couldn’t walk. Coaches had left, still ignoring her crying on the floor.

@Leflic I think you are confused. I was a gymnast not a parent of a gymnast.

both my girls 5 and 10 go to a fantastic gymnastics club. With coaches that I 100% trust. I always stay to watch them practice and go to all competitions and have never seen anything with any coach or gymnast that made me feel uncomfortable

Or did you think the relentless training was a positive childhood experience

But that’s just it! It was! It was amazing and fabulous and the most wonderful feeling.

And awful and terrible and terrifying and sick inducing.

But I would come out of a good training session absolutely buzzing with excitement and wonder and would just be so so happy.

My parents hated gymnastics. The time. The money. The endless dealing with the coaches who never gave them any decent information. The competitions where you drove for 3 hours, hung around all day and your child competed for less than 4 minutes in total. Had I said “I don’t want to do gym any more” they would have probably thrown a party. But I begged to go. To fit our lives around it.

My son had a bad experience at gymnastics 3 years ago. We never went back. It was all about the shows, he didn't want to do one of them and his coach flipped at him saying he better do it, he will let everyone down, he will let me down, my son started crying and he shouted at him even more for crying and said he's rubbish so he better practice to get better for the show and stop the crying.

The coach didn't realise I was standing behind another parent. I fucking lost it at him, he tried answering back but he didn't get a word in. Quite a few parents left and his team show only had 8 kids in it as the other 12 kids had been pulled out.

Our local club runs really lovely parent and toddler classes during the day - we used to go and the dc got so much from the sessions that I signed them up for the club as they started school. The change and contrast was ridiculous - no parents allowed in, expensive uniform stuff, lining up to go in, forfeits if late (my fault, not theirs) etc.

There was a club competition/show thing and both dh and I went to watch. The head coach talked about how they were 'spotting talent' and talked a lot about those who 'looked' right. Dh was horrified and adament he wanted our dc to stop going as he felt they were being made body conscious at a really young age.

We kept going for a bit through mounting unease - the dc would not want to go but not want me to speak to the coaches and then argue they did want to carry on. It all felt off and I was really worried about the increasing commitments expected. I saw dc only a couple of years older attending multiple days for hours at a time and dreaded that being us.

When we left my DC begged not to and still miss it now. But I've seen their peers spend longer and longer hours there and none of them actually seem to enjoy it!

Glad we got out tbh.

But I remember reading about this abuse in gymnastics and figure skating in the 1990s, and I wasn't involved in either sport. Why is it only coming out now? The Karolyis were explicitly named.

DD loves gymnastics, but I hate the idea of her training 20 hrs a week, basically giving up her childhood, for an absolutely tiny chance of being “successful” /carrying on past the age of 15 or so. It’s a pretty toxic environment just looking at training hours, sacrifices, and the age of these wee kids. A six year old doing 15-hours a week??? It’s just hard to see how that could ever be OK.

That’s without the obvious potential for abuse.

DD is 8 but won’t make it to an “elite” stream -she started too old (at 6!!!), she’ll grow too tall, and worst, she’s got fairly deformed arms (so shes crap on bars). She loves it, goes a couple days a week, and if the coach was rotten to her we’d find a different club.
But if she was looking for national selection, needed to do her compulsories at 8, and terrified of being dropped from a squad, etc it’s a whole different thing.

I done gymnastics as a child and absolutely loved it - nothing was better than training and playing with my friends! When I was 11/12, I was asked to join the clubs competitive team and only lasted about 6 months because I couldn't deal with it. I trained for +12hrs a week - and they expected you to make gymnastics your absolute priority. One pretty bad memory was the coach sitting on the base of my back while I was in box split to make me stretch further - wouldnt stop no matter how much I cried. I remember being so panicked and upset going to my classes but also feeling I had to keep going as there was pressure on my parents to pay up and buy the teams kit etc which I knew at a young age was a huge expense for them. They encouraged me as they thought I was enjoying it - 20 years later, I dont think I've ever told them the extent of it!

Curious, is this the same problem is boys/senior men gymnastics. Or just girls/women?

I’m another ex-gymnast who competed at a high level and there was rampant abuse of many types across the sport. As others have said, I didn’t even recognise it as abuse at the time, it was just what went with being a competitive gymnast. I actually try not to remember too much of it as I’m another who is physically (and arguably) still damaged from it. But this rang a bell “She was force stretched every session and sat on by adults.” I remember my coach was 8 months pregnant (and she wasn’t small before that) and took great amusement in force stretching me and sitting on me while I sobbed.

So there was a story in my local paper this week about a very well know local trainer / club owner - who is being prosecuted for sexual offences with young gymnasts - I took my daughter to two different gymnastics clubs and i disliked both of them and we didn't continue - but the first one, i think i saw the guy in question working with two young girls and it sent chills up my back - there was very much an ethos of don't complain around the place - in fact i think it was in the contract and in posters in the girls changing area / toilets. The second club is part of a nationwide franchise - the problem i had with that is large groups of small children being taught by one teenage coach - no correcting of form bordering on dangerous in fact one girl in my dd's group did have a fracture and no first aid was offered - my point is, if you are taking your child to gymnastics then please keep your eyes wide open.

[quote andannabegins]@Frankola did your parents know how bad it was? My daughter has wrecked knees, hips, feet and wrists and is only 15. We are waiting to see if she can perhaps have an op when everything starts up again on a toe that needs fixing[/quote]
And yet she dances?

I really dont mean to be facetious, but why not just pull her out altogether?

My mum is in her 80s but was born in a small country in E Europe famous for its gymnasts. The abuse she talks about is absolutely horrendous.

DD is 14 and a rower. We now live in the country my mum and dad left many years ago. She hates the fact my daughter does this sport, hates it. I am hyper vigilant, and so far, so good, but at first my mother begged me in tears not to let DD sign up.

My goodness you poor things, it really sounds like lambs to the slaughter & it’s more than time to take the lid off the sport. We had it with youth football & now this at the same time, our poor children. I did competitive sport internationally as a teenager but never experienced anything like it in my sport. I was scared of the coach a bit and did try hard for him as much as for myself and team mates. It was like a drug, winning was so high, but loosing was like a chain round your neck until the next win.

I s been watching the reports on the news on horror. What I can’t understand is why the girls continued to be gymnasts when they hated the training so much? Why didn’t they leave?

Who would let their primary age child have a part time job? No one... yet 15 plus hours per week is standard for competitive gymnasts. And the toll is huge.

did you think the relentless training was a positive childhood experience?

I’m inclined to agree with both of these posters. Parents can’t just abnegate responsibility. You can’t complain of being robbed of 20 hours a week with your daughter when you took her to training yourself.

I gave up competitive gymnastics aged 11: I got too tall. I wasn’t upset: I didn’t want to spend all my time in the gym and my parents certainly didn’t let me train for the hours that would have been required to compete at elite level. Quite right too.

Even at 11 it was obvious to me that if you wanted to compete at an international level you had to train as the Soviets, the Romanians and the Americans did. Most of those girls had given up school in favour of tutors and lived austere lives: no going for burgers with your friends, no discos, no sleeping in. Parents must have known that too.

Parents of elite gymnasts are, whether they admit it or not, paying the coaches to produce winners. That’s not to say that coaches’ behaviour has always been good, but any parent who thinks that a child training for gymnastics at an elite level, training for >15 hours a week, will lead a life of sunshine and unicorns is fooling themselves.

This makes me so sick reading. Although my daughter didn't do gymnastics we had a very similar experience with ballet for years. I'm so glad my DD doesn't go anymore.

@KatherineParr4 I did leave. But it’s very hard when you’ve been training so many hours since you were 4 years old and are doing well at a national level but you have to give it all up because of an individual when you still enjoy the actual sport and are so sucessful on it. Also, for me the abuse didn’t start until I was 10 (although I saw older girls being abused from age 4) so I was already very invested and had sacrificed a lot.