Written by After an undiagnosed stress fracture led to an horrific ankle fracture during a routine, aspiring Olympic gymnast Georgia Simpson came to the realization that she would never compete again.
Simpson was told that she should “toughen up” and with that her career was over. Years later she laments that “…our voices weren’t valued”, decisions were made for them without regard to the athletes’ happiness or wellbeing.
I first wrote about the abuse in Australian gymnastics in January; The Endemic Culture of Abuse in Gymnastics, and on May 3, 2021, the Human Rights Commission released their findings and recommendations in response to the many complaints they were receiving from former athletes. The document: “Change the Routine: Report on the Independent Review into Gymnastics in Australia (2021)” outlines a steadily worsening culture that while not featuring predators like Larry Nassar in the US, was evidence of an insidiously accepted and even ‘normalized’ routine of abuse.
“Australian gymnastics for the past 30 years has accepted fear, punitive training, ostracization and a reckless attitude towards injuries as legitimate methods to turn children into Olympic athletes.” – Australian Human Rights Commission.
The stories that fed that document were many, like that of 15-year-old Sarah Lauren who decided to quit the sport after returning home from the Commonwealth Games in Manchester where she had won two gold medals. Her coach, the highly respected Peggy Liddick, responded with a letter that declared that “It is not YOUR decision to make” … “No academic record cannot [sic] replace having that ‘Olympian’ on your resume”. She also stated that Lauren was ‘fooling herself’ if she thought that her Commonwealth gold medals proved that she had achieved anything at all in the sport. Lauren, who was receiving regular cortisone injections for her acquired injuries, simply wanted to be granted her right to pursue a life outside of gymnastics and get an education.
More drastically, there is Tain Molendijk who at 13, had developed such anxieties that she regularly locked herself in the ladies’ restrooms during training and bang her head against the wall. Tracey Gartner had her Olympic dream dashed at 15 by failing the skin fold test which revealed her being in excess of the maximum 40 millimeters of body fat permitted. This obsessive fixation on weight had its origins in the Soviet Bloc and Chinese model of performance management and was being applied to little girls as young as eight. These are merely a few of the litany of damaged former athletes now standing up to Gymnastics Australia to declare their case.
The Western Australian Institute of Sport is working with Integrity Australia in a separate enquiry to investigate the no-less-than 57 testimonials from female and male former gymnasts.
The Australian Sports Commission apologised on Friday (April 30, 2021) to the aggrieved former gymnasts, and Gymnastics Australia has acknowledged and apologised for this continued abuse and vowed to adhere to the many recommendations of the Human Rights Commission report. Only when this happens can the sport of gymnastics in Australia begin to clean up its tarnished reputation and rebuild its damaged culture.
Cruel game: Former gymnasts open up on culture of fear and control (brisbanetimes.com.au)