Sporting excellence is worth the "abusive" behaviour it takes to get there - Nadia Comaneci

[Bubblebu]

Saw a newspaper article about Nadia Comaneci and specifically detailing the abuse she and others went through in the 1970s whilst training as a pre pubescent girl to achieve the heights she did.

I am old enough to remember the 1970s as a child and think that the casual attitude to abuse permeated many areas of society. It was not as straight forward as "soviet attitude" or such like.

There seem to be many areas of life now where modern day values and attitudes are applied to decades ago in a retrospective way to condemn past practices.

But where the past practices resulted in undeniable and astonishing excellence do you think they can still be justified in retrospect?

YBU - of course abuse of any sort (including mental abuse) never justfies any outcome
YANBU - no abuse can sometimes be justified depending on the outcomes both for the individual at the time and thereafter

Sporting excellence can, and is, achieved without abusive coaches.

Has Nadia herself expressed a view, in the article you read?

No Nadia has not. And so far as I am aware she has not (published at least) said she was abused and regrets it all.
The article seems much more matter of fact in tone in some ways.

Of course I would be interested to hear her view.

It was a wider question, namely when attitudes generally were very different in the 1970s (and granted the culture of the country she grew up in) - and her achievement even now seems totally astounding. Watching you tube clips now feels fairly breath taking to me.

I am not justifying any abuse. I am saying she was a unique individual who seemed to excel under pressure others would have and did find unbearable.

edwinbear.

Would you consider requring a child of below 13 years to train for 8 hours a day 6 days per week for years and years to be abusive?

Not necessarily, no. Provided the child understood why they needed to train so hard, was committed to it and wanted to. And of course that the child was supported with the necessary physio/nutritionist/sports psychologist.

A child who is forced to train that hard by their coaches/parents, without being given any say in the matter, and/or is too frightened to object, that's different. I'd consider that abusive, yes.

But where the past practices resulted in undeniable and astonishing excellence do you think they can still be justified in retrospect?

It’s a good question, but the problem is that most of the time it didn’t result in such excellence. Plenty of Nadia's little colleagues paid the price without the results.

edwinbear

I understand what you are getting at but your statement "A child who is forced to train that hard by their coaches/parents, without being given any say in the matter, and/or is too frightened to object"

Is that not the whole point - that children aged 13 and under just are not developed enough to know how to say something when "given a say" (if they are). Obviously if her treatment is proven (which I am sure did happen) it was frightening for all of the children involved yet being able to object was not something which goes hand in hand with achieving such astounding results?

I.e it was an immutable feature of her excellence that she was a child therefore so pliable and easy to teach both physically and (importantly) psychologically.

TheKeating

Yes I am sure you are right there.

Provided the child understood why they needed to train so hard, was committed to it and wanted to

I have real issues with this. As an ASD child I would have been quite happy to focus on my special interest (Not Sport!) to the exclusion of everything else. But I was a child and not an adult.

I actually needed adults to make adult decisions for me such as learning social skills was important, sometimes I had to learn subjects I thought were dull because they were part of adult life and so on.

A hyperfocussed child with a talent is not a good judge of what healthy decisions are.

There is a documentary on Netflix called Athlete A about them systemic abuse of female gymnasts ik team USA gymnastics. Absolutely horrific. Nothing is worth abuse I don’t care the result.

There is something in the article I read which made some (what could be interpreted as fairly glib) observations like "watching it back now it was obvious how [Nadia C] got there because she was so under developed for a girl of [14]" etc

And yet many sports folk will struggle to deny that the lenghts required to hone your body to the standards required often involve measures which push the physical body to the edge of what is world class and what is down right dangerous. But without doing that you will not achieve that anyway.

The fact that even now in this day and age Netflix makes articles on this suggests that this fact does not go away.

Doesn't the Netflix Athlete A (mainly concentrates on the doctor who sexually abused members of the USA squad) also feature the Karolyi's who were Nadia's coaches and then defected to the USA?

They were viewed as brutal, neglectful and also not stopping the abuse within the USA squad.

Oh, I thought you were quoting her in your title. It’s confusing.

Well, sexual abuse isn’t helping any athlete and starving and beating a child to make them perform is unacceptable.

I think in order to excel in something there will have to be sacrifices along the way but what is and isn't acceptable can vary a lot. The kind of training methods used in Romania in the 70s was horrific. I don't know what it's like today but I would say the results ñever justified the means.
To be honest, I don't think I would be keen for my kids to be so good at a sport they might have a shot at the olympics but I'm sure this would be a dream come true for someone else.

honeybee

The impression I get was that NC and others in Romania were in something of a bubble /goldfishbowl - watching her it is almost like she had trained so hard it was such second nature to her it was almost like any other day.
not even a wiff of any kind of nerves during any of her routines.
that might have just been her personality but equally it seems likely that the training happened without any input from anyone anywhere seeing what was going on.

i dont know. It is just conjecture on my part.

I've often thought female gymnastics is a bit creepy as they are made to compete in leotards without footless tights or even knickers underneath while males compete in shorts and vests or unitards.

No abuse ever justifies the outcome. No matter how many Olympic gold medals are collected in the end.

I just don't think it can ever be in a child's best interests to collude with them in the fib that it's fine to train 8 hours 6 days a week, no matter how much the kid is into it. It's not balanced. It's not a healthy pursuit of a goal.

Kids need adults who are fighting their corner and who want the best for them as a whole human being - not some fantasy sports star.

I also think the title sounds like you are quoting Nadia.

AbsentmindedWoman

I agree with you.

But I still cannot get my head round the undeniable situation (so far as I can see it) that there really is an age window in most sports - and the younger the better in many cases.

Maybe the above will be disproved and the physcial feats achieved by the younger age brackets start increasingly to be achieved by the older age brackets but so far I cannot see it.

Take professional football. Professional rugby.

Perhaps not comparable as they are traditionally seen as male sports so the narrative about possible "abuse of authority" of younger participants take a slightly different set of factors.

But still there is undeniably usually an "optimal age" in which they are either going to "make it" or they are seen as too old.

Even where i live one of our neighbours is currently disparing because her 17 year old son has narrowly missed trials for his dreamed of swimming career and she looks gutted that everyone will shortly see him as too old. And he has got up at 4am to train regularly for the last x years etc.

PS at no point was i suggesting i was repeating anything NC every said (although I have not researched her biography in detail but irrespective of that it was never my intention in starting this thread).

Most successful sportspeople have been abused on some level. To get to an elite level you have to start young and be pushed hard, to an extent that could be seen as abusive. I still remember the abuse I received in school, being forced to run and play hockey and other sports despite me loathing them and being genuinely incapable of playing them well. Other people may have found the activities fun, I didn't but was still coerced into taking part.

The nature of pushing oneself beyond one's limit is in itself abusive. Whether it is self abuse, where the person genuinely wants to improve, or abuse from the coach or trainer is to an extent irrelevant. Children are not capable of giving informed consent therefore shouldn't be pushed or allowed to push themselves.

In an ideal world nobody would be permitted to take up a sport until they were 18, that way they could properly consent to the abuse needed.

The questions for me are these:

For every Nadia this method produced, how many were mentally destroyed?

Is the collateral damage worth it to find "the one"?

How much of the stern treatment/abuse was rooted in adults getting their jollies rather than striving for excellence?

Does anyone but the likes of Nadia herself actually get to decide if it is worth it?

Cannot say I know the answers, they are just my questions. My personal feeling is, no, it's not worth it but then who am I to say with no sports background to speak of.

You need to edit the title of this. Is misleading.

The title is not misleading and even if you think it is once very cursory glance at the first couple of messages makes it plain I am not in any way trying to quote something she might have said and/or endorsed.

Why would a thread in which she had said this be any more interesting??

That a big headline "of the day" is so much more interesting than a genuine debate.

It is clearly not an attempt to suggest NC (or any other sports man) has said something like this.

I simply put her name in because she seems a perfect example of such an exceptional world class talent at an extremely young age (and an extremely young age even for 1976).

Puppy I agree with your succinct analysis.