Chalked Up: Inside Elite Gymnastics' Merciless Coaching, Overzealous Parents, Eating Disorders, and Elusive Olympic Dreams

[Puffin]

Which was about a dozen years past being moronic at that point. The 04 Olympics had loads of medallists in their 20s!

It really was! I always wondered whether it was a Karolyi narrative - they always preferred the young 15-16 year olds and didn't care if they quit within a couple of years.

The Karolyi regime was also very hostile to accommodating NCAA gymnasts forcing many to choose between elite and college - the US WAG would have a very sad medal count at the recent Worlds if college gymnasts were still pushed off the national team.

 

[MaryClare]

It really was! I always wondered whether it was a Karolyi narrative - they always preferred the young 15-16 year olds and didn't care if they quit within a couple of years.

The Karolyi regime was also very hostile to accommodating NCAA gymnasts forcing many to choose between elite and college - the US WAG would have a very sad medal count at the recent Worlds if college gymnasts were still pushed off the national team.

It was definitely a karolyi preference but I think it was also a narrative that suited the broadcasters

 

[RichardL]

The only members of the '96 team who weren't legal adults were Jaycie Phelps and Dominique Moceanu and three of them were on the 1992 Olympic Team.

And everyone but Strug [ETA: and Borden] made a run for Sydney!

 

[Puffin]

It was definitely a karolyi preference but I think it was also a narrative that suited the broadcasters

Yeah the old guard of broadcasters definitely pushed the "cute little girls" and "wonder kids" narrative

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

It really was! I always wondered whether it was a Karolyi narrative - they always preferred the young 15-16 year olds and didn't care if they quit within a couple of years.

The Karolyi regime was also very hostile to accommodating NCAA gymnasts forcing many to choose between elite and college - the US WAG would have a very sad medal count at the recent Worlds if college gymnasts were still pushed off the national team.

With Marta, I think the best way to characterise it is that she didn't really give a fuck. Had no interest in accommodating NCAA, longer careers or really even gymnasts staying healthy. There was no facilitation going on, no fucks given, only what can you do for me today.

However, when someone from that background nonetheless turned up at selection time with usable routines, she wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I have always said, if Ceaucescu's reanimated corpse had been capable of an Amanar and a competitive bars D score, she'd have gone for it no questions asked.

 

[rlayt]

She didn’t like a lot of things about Simone either like how she opted out of camps for a while. Anyone who brought the goods had to be considered.

 

[QuietColours]

Chapter 16

• Parkettes
  • Mom was relieved when Jen wanted to try Parkettes. Parkettes was only a two hour drive from their house–a feasible commute, Jen wouldn't have to move away from home. Her dad offered to buy a van so Jen could study comfortably while her mother drove her
  • Was very nervous to meet with the Strausses–both about the possibility of being rejected and being accepted. They were notoriously rough–screaming, cursing, throwing things, maybe hitting the backs of legs. Her parents weren't privy to that gossip–it was something the athletes kept to themselves
  • Strausses rigor about weight was notorious. The girls couldn't eat anything, were weighed twice a day and other athletes snuck them food at competitions. Weight gain meant more workout in a rubber suit. And shame.
  • Competed in white leotards to show off how little body fat they had
  • Her mom was nervous too–she wanted to be the mom of a girl good enough to make the Parkettes
  • The gym was very large. The boy's team got ¼ the space, the girls the rest. There as a large foam pit, with the ability to train all events into it. Lolo didn't have a pit. Beams were padded, which was new, and enough uneven bars every girl training had her own. Two floor mats.
  • Donna seemed happy to see them and hugged Jen. She had Jen join workout and her mother went to the observation area. Not all parents were allowed to watch, but her mother got permission because of the length of their commute. Some parents were banned–the coaches said it was because some girls couldn't practice with parents; Jen says it was because the coaches knew they needed to hide their behavior
  • Another Jennifer showed Jen the locker room. Jen was shy because the other girl was so skinny; she felt very fat and decided not to remove her tights for the entire practice.
• Coaches and Athletes
  • Cindy and Nicole, the pixies she'd seen a few years earlier at the Parkettes camp, were already gone–they left the sport at 13, before high school.
  • The ten year olds (the new stars) were Lisa, Marsha, and Jane, and they would be attempting to qualify elite this year. On beam, they were doing advanced tumbling runs and skills Jen had never attempted, throwing themselves into them with reckless abandon, sometimes hitting and often falling. They seemed to go nonstop
  • Jen was adopted by an assistant coach, John. But everyone was welcoming, endearing themselves as a prerequisite to controlling her. They lavished praise and enthusiasm, knowing that if they took it away she'd crave it again
  • Coaches
    • Donna was petite, under 5'0 and 100 lbs, about 40. She looked like she could have been a gymnast herself a few years ago, but she never had been
    • Bill was about 10 years older, balding, and paunchy. He could roar, but he was always the first with the hug. He didn't coach regularly–he'd get attached to a certain girl, and when they left or got injured he'd take time off. He'd been on sabbatical after Gina Stallone left for college and was slowly going back.
  • Hope was his new star–raw athletic ability with little grace, poise, or control. She was barely 13
  • Bill would spend little time with Jen. He was the only person to call her Jenny–she usually didn't fit the "cute" bill of a Jenny–and she liked it when he did it
  • Robin was 30-ish, blond, muscular, and a former national team member who was coached by the Strausses. She owed them her success and her employment–stable jobs were coveted in Allentown. Her husband was often out of work, and she had three kids–a son and twin girls. The baby girls sat in a nearby playpen while she coached.She could be sadistically harsh because her livelihood depended on their success
  • John was tall, rangy, and goofy looking with buckteeth, bulging eyes, and thick glasses. He'd been a volleyball player. Jen says she'll never understand why people who didn't do gymnastics become gymnastics coaches. This includes all men, because men's gymnastics is so different
  • She says men become coaches to coach prepubescent girls in leotards
  • John was lewd, lascivious, and flirtatious, but he was never inappropriate with athletes on the Parkettes team. He may have liked being surrounded by barely dressed teens, but he never explicitly let on–he was protective and he may have liked looking, but he never touched
  • Coach Patrick from the camp was gone, asked quietly to leave after accusations of inappropriate behavior with some younger girls.
  • John genuinely believed in Jen and wanted her to be a winner. Lolo believed Jen was smart, tenacious, and focused and that would get her places in life, but she never believed Jen was better than Angie or the other girls she needed to beat. John knew she was mentally tough and capable of willing herself to win.
• First days
  • All the coaches wanted her to like it at Parkettes, so they took it easy on her at first. They'd only recently lost Cindy and Nicole and needed new seniors to build their team. Parkettes' strength was in numbers. There was always another girl
  • Jen had never had so many girls to train with or be friends with. She was underdeveloped and socially immature, not interested in boys or sex, and here were lots of other girls just like her
  • There were at least ten elites and ten more trying to qualify. Many girls, as young as 10, boarded in Allentown. The Armstrong family, whose daughter Jessica was a senior elite with a modest ranking–housed up to five boarders at any time, housed in bunk beds the attic. Jessica had her own room ("her perfect little girl's bedroom"). Mrs. Armstrong strictly monitored food intake, per Mrs. Strauss' instructions. Other girls lived with assistant coaches or other families.
  • Until now, Jen had attended competitions alone or with one other girl; now she had a posse. She'd admired cliques in high school, and now she'd be part of one.
  • John had her warm up free hips, stalders, and giants on bars. After her 'warm up' she'd done more than entire bars practice at Will-Moor. John wasn't terribly impressed and wanted to see what else she could do. He asked her to show her release moves. She started with Jaegers, the move she was least scared of, and declined a spot. She caught her heels and fell. "You okay?" She nodded. "Again."
  • She did it over and over, making the same mistake. He pushed her to stay stretched longer to build up more speed, making more height to make the flip. She didn't consider saying no. At Parkettes, going scared was the assumption.
  • She had egg-sized bumps on her Achilles by the end; John offered to tape foam to her ankles, but she declined–she could handle it
  • After that they did Deltchevs. She'd practiced these less, so she accepted the spot. She did one after another, eventually without assistance.
  • On floor, he wanted a layout pike (double back with a layout in the first salto and a pike in the second). Then he challenged her to layout the whole thing. No one else had ever asked her to do such a hard trick. John hurled her through it, tossing her with all his might. She knows this, because she landed on her feet.
• Commitment
  • Her dad made good on his promise to buy the van, with a full desk for studying, a "groovy" stripe on the outside, and plush carpet comfortable for napping.
  • Her mom drove her two hours each way to train every day. Occasionally a paid driver or her dad took her so her mom could spend some time with Chris, still at Will-Moor. Most days Chris was driven to practice by an older boy and left to his own devices after pickup.
  • Jen was excused from school at noon, skipping lunch, study hall, and gym.
  • Jen would eat lunch and finish her trig and chemistry homework on the way, arriving cramped and sleepy around 2:30. The other girls had already been training for at least an hour and half. They were dismissed from local schools at 12:30, and the drive put Jen behind. Jen was often in a rotation by herself because of the late start, which made it difficult to integrate with the team
  • The tardiness was excused in the beginning to help forge the relationship. They probably knew she'd eventually beg her parents to let her move so she could be a full part of the team.
  • Their patience was part of the indoctrination
  • Jen trained five days a week. The local girls and boarders who were from further away trained Saturdays too. Jen was panicky about the missed practice time.
  • All the adults in her life worked to make this new path work for Jen. Winning was everything. Her brother would just have to fend for himself. She never questioned it.

 

[Passion]

• The gym was very large. The boy's team got ¼ the space, the girls the rest. There was a large foam pit, with the ability to train all events into it. Lolo didn't have a pit. Beams were padded, which was new, and enough uneven bars every girl training had her own. Two floor mats.

It makes me sad such a nice facility was wasted on such misguided coaches.

 

[dweiss324]

Marta obviously had a reputation for being spiteful and unforgiving, but are there concrete examples of gymnasts she denied to world / Olympic teams despite their exceptional, undeniable performances? Line ups are a different thing (ie dowell). Gabby 2016 she gave the benefit of the doubt to. But I cant think of another example that holds up in hindsight. My recollection is that she might have been rueful and exacting, but also remarkably consistent in that approach.

 

[Passion]

I think some of it comes down to how much of her discouragement hindered gymnasts from having their exceptional, undeniable performances in the first place.

What might Mattie Larson have been capable of in 2011 if she wasn’t mistreated the way she was in 2010? If she was supported instead of ignored?

If Boorman didn’t pull Biles from camps for a year early in the elite process, would Biles have continued with elite long enough to ever go to a World Championship?

She was consistent in picking the best teams from what was available come selection time, but her penchant for discarding gymnasts affected how much talent she had left available by selection.

 

[MaryClare]

This is all just completely crazy. How the f*ck as parents do you not take a step back and realise how crazy you’re being

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Marta obviously had a reputation for being spiteful and unforgiving, but are there concrete examples of gymnasts she denied to world / Olympic teams despite their exceptional, undeniable performances? Line ups are a different thing (ie dowell). Gabby 2016 she gave the benefit of the doubt to. But I cant think of another example that holds up in hindsight. My recollection is that she might have been rueful and exacting, but also remarkably consistent in that approach.

Me neither. I agree with @Passion the problem was really about what led up to the point of selection, and that's not quite the same thing.

Even with lineups, she wasn't that bad really. The decision not to even list Priess and Kelley as potential alternates in 06 TFs was admittedly a couple of decades worth of obnoxiousness and stupidity all by itself, but everything else is at least arguably justifiable I think? In 2015, while it's legitimate to criticise the decision not to let Maggie do AA, it was consistent with Marta's established (bad) approach to selection.

With my hard hat on, I don't actually think it's terrible for the reigning Olympic champion to be given more leeway in a close call than people who aren't the reigning Olympic champion either...

 

[Hatsumomo]

This is all just completely crazy. How the f*ck as parents do you not take a step back and realise how crazy you’re being

Ego and living vicariously through the child. Tends to blind people.

 

[IratePanda]

And Sey wasn't even all that good! She obviously had a great work ethic, but little natural talent. Grit and determination could only get her so far. Lolo, her coach at Will-Moor, was the only one who recognized this. Her parents were certifiable whack jobs.

The Hope mentioned here is Hope Spivey, who was on the 1988 team. Was she the only Parkette to compete at the Olympics?

 

[rlayt]

Later there was Kristin Maloney.

 

[MaryClare]

And Sey wasn't even all that good! She obviously had a great work ethic, but little natural talent. Grit and determination could only get her so far. Lolo, her coach at Will-Moor, was the only one who recognized this. Her parents were certifiable whack jobs.

The Hope mentioned here is Hope Spivey, who was on the 1988 team. Was she the only Parkette to compete at the Olympics?

That’s what I mean. She just wasn’t that good. And she knew that she wasn’t that good!

 

[IratePanda]

Later there was Kristin Maloney.

Oops. I completely forgot about her.

 

[Puffin]

Parkettes parents seemed to have been among the craziest of the crazy gym parents

Is that documentary from the early 2000s around anywhere? - remember the abusive berating and the infamous "quitter's try". Also remember the totally crazy gym-mom who forced her 7 year old to participate in a verification with a broken ankle - mom removed the cast .....

 

[Passion]

Is that documentary from the early 2000s around anywhere

Achieving The Perfect 10
CNN Documentary

 

[RedBirdie]

The John and Robin that Sey refers to, and are seen the the Parkettes documentary, were eventually sanctioned by SafeSport. John Holman has been banned for life, while Robin Netwall received a suspension (appears to be done, as I cannot find her on the list any more). Bill Strauss received as "letter of admonishment" while no action was taking against Donna Strauss due to "failing health."