Artistic Gymnastics 2020 Discussion Thread

[Vic Liu 1,699]

17 minutes ago, Federer91 said:

Russian and chinese athletes are like "Is this all you've got" 

Yes. Being called fat, useless and stupid is way too common for teenager and young athletes and also common to see that punishment and abuse if heavy load training are not fulfilled regardless of mental or physical condition. Still lots of Chinese believe that being harsh even with some mental abuse is good for young athletes growing better.

[heywoodu 16,146]

2 hours ago, thiago_simoes said:

@heywoodu I'm sad to hear about all of this. It's heartbreaking.

 

Yep. It's sad to hear when it happens somewhere, but it's in nearly every freaking country. What makes artistic gymnastic so much more toxic than other sports, at least by the looks of it? I know there are plenty of coaches in plenty of sports who are very much treating their young athletes as human guinea pigs, but I really can't think of any sport where it's so incredibly widespread - both in terms of sheer numbers and the wide variety of nations involved - as gymnastics.

[heywoodu 16,146]

1 hour ago, Vic Liu said:

Yes. Being called fat, useless and stupid is way too common for teenager and young athletes and also common to see that punishment and abuse if heavy load training are not fulfilled regardless of mental or physical condition. Still lots of Chinese believe that being harsh even with some mental abuse is good for young athletes growing better.

Which is sad. 'Some mental abuse' is too much mental abuse, by definition.

 

I definitely get that it is extremely hard for a coach to find the right balance. You can't always be nice, because athletes - let's say those who are willing to go far - do need to be pushed to both their physical and mental limits, it's what makes athletes better than the average person in their sport. But go a tiny bit too far, and you cross the line into outright abuse and pure negativity.

 

That being said, if you're not someone who can keep those things balanced and get the maximum out of an athlete without going deep into negative territory, you're really not cut out to being a coach at all.

[Olympian1010 8,274]

1 minute ago, heywoodu said:

 

Yep. It's sad to hear when it happens somewhere, but it's in nearly every freaking country. What makes artistic gymnastic so much more toxic than other sports, at least by the looks of it? I know there are plenty of coaches in plenty of sports who are very much treating their young athletes as human guinea pigs, but I really can't think of any sport where it's so incredibly widespread - both in terms of sheer numbers and the wide variety of nations involved - as gymnastics.

It comes down to the coaching culture of gymnastics. It’s going to take a lot to change it too.

 

It’s like I said on the podcast, the IOC/FIG need to take a strong stance on athlete abuse. Coaches caught engaging in this activity should be banned from the sport for life. Nations where this culture persists despite policing should be given sanctions in the form of fines, quota restrictions, and ultimately bans in necessary. Punishment shouldn’t be the only solution though, becuase then federations will just work tirelessly to hide this type of activity. There needs to be other “soft-power” solutions too, such as athlete/coach forms, safe sport support groups for athletes, classes that encourage more positive coaching methods for coaches, an anonymous web portal for athletes to report abuse, etc.

[dcro 10,210]

20 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

 

Yep. It's sad to hear when it happens somewhere, but it's in nearly every freaking country. What makes artistic gymnastic so much more toxic than other sports, at least by the looks of it? I know there are plenty of coaches in plenty of sports who are very much treating their young athletes as human guinea pigs, but I really can't think of any sport where it's so incredibly widespread - both in terms of sheer numbers and the wide variety of nations involved - as gymnastics.

 

Well, it's also very different than other sports. Unlike athletics and swimming where athletes pretty much do one motion their entire career, top level gymnasts are constantly asked to learn new movements / upgrade difficulty. Especially during their formative years.

[Olympian1010 8,274]

1 minute ago, dcro said:

 

Well, it's also very different than other sports. Unlike athletics and swimming where athletes pretty much do one mention their entire career, top level gymnasts are constantly asked to learn new movements / upgrade difficulty. Especially during their formative years.

And there’s a heightened importance placed on perfection. It also seems like gymnasts are taught to always show a lot of happy outward emotion, but instructed to basically crush any inner emotion, which as someone who studies this stuff in college, I can tell you is a very dangerous recipe for poor athlete health (and human health in general).

[Olympian1010 8,274]

Letter sent to the media by FIG President Morinari Watanabe:

 

All voices matter 

 

Dear All,

 

In recent weeks, we have witnessed many athletes in parts of Europe and Oceania taking to social media to tell what happened during their journey in Gymnastics. They have spoken out about how their passion for the sport has been damaged to various extents by humiliation, mistreatment and fear of retribution if they complain.

 

As a man, each story makes me sad.

 

As President of the FIG, the bravery of these athletes gives me hope.

 

It means that there is a genuine will for change.

 

It means that some old, authoritarian methods - however successful they might have been in the past - are not tolerated anymore.

 

I want to tell the gymnasts who have the courage to speak out that their voices matter.

 

I want to tell them that it is never too late to get involved and to push for reform, at any level.

 

When I became President of the FIG in 2017, just months after the Larry Nassar scandal came to light in the United States, I promised to undertake whatever was needed to avoid that such cases of massive sexual abuse could happen again in our sport.

 

We learnt, from the testimonies of those brave young American women, how a climate of fear was an environment for the perpetration of such crime.

 

In the wake of this affair, the FIG has established the Gymnastics Ethics Foundation to encourage anyone to report any form of rules violation, abuse and harassment, and to provide a safe, confidential mechanism to do so. www.gymnasticsethicsfoundation.org/safeguarding

 

The task was not easy, but today the Foundation is fully operational and is investigating several cases.

 

As well as any form of physical violence clearly being intolerable, insults and threats have no place in any training hall. Whatever is at stake, Gymnastics must remain, above all, a fun sport to practice.

 

More can be done to draw a clear separation between what is acceptable and what is not. The FIG is working on initiatives to that end. We all know plenty of positive tales in the sport. Those are the ones that need to be shared and replicated.

 

I invite all of you to consider what could and should be done at your own level. The FIG can provide the impetus; however, we will manage to foster a culture of respect in the sport only if we make the necessary efforts together.

[Olympian1010 8,274]

I’m not super impressed with this letter, but it’s a start I guess. 

[Grassmarket 4,110]

Well, there’s no chance of the FIG investigating China or North Korea, so there’s not much reason for any other nation to continue funding or promoting women’s gymnastics programmes at this point.

[thiago_simoes 1,441]

On 27/07/2020 at 17:08, heywoodu said:

 

Yep. It's sad to hear when it happens somewhere, but it's in nearly every freaking country. What makes artistic gymnastic so much more toxic than other sports, at least by the looks of it? I know there are plenty of coaches in plenty of sports who are very much treating their young athletes as human guinea pigs, but I really can't think of any sport where it's so incredibly widespread - both in terms of sheer numbers and the wide variety of nations involved - as gymnastics.

 

In my opinion, it's even worse in rhythmic gymnastics, but you're right: this sport is toxic when it comes to how training is conducted all around the world. There are a number of reasons for that:

1) Most coaches learned to coach the Soviet way.
2) In some countries, physical violence and emotional abuse are seen as efficient ways to discipline athletes, and these countries usually thrive in gymnastics.
3) There's huge pressure for traditional programs to keep their results.
4) Similarly, smaller programs feel that if they don't come up with a miracle, funding will be cut, so they put three times more pressure on gymnasts for good results.
5) Age-requirements in women's artistic gymnastics are ridiculous. While in men's artistic gymnastics the boys are allowed to compete in senior events when they are 18 or older, in women's programs girls turn senior when they are 16. It's terrible because 13-14 year-old-girls are supposed to perform very hard skills and their bodies are not ready for that, so the coaches push them above their theoretical limits, and either the girls snap, the coaches snap, or both.

In rhythmic gymnastics all of these points are 10 times worse because the number of countries that are relevant is very small, funding is nearly non-existent, basically only post-Soviet nations are relevant (and Bulgaria, a country which some coaches are equally toxic), and gymnasts over 20 are almost universally seen as past their prime.