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

[KristyJ]

Back when 17 was considered old in the sport

 

[QuietColours]

Chapter 19

• Gymnastics is a punishing contact sport. Jen always waited for her big crash, and then she knew she'd be safe for the day. Fate knew not to deal her more than that
• The ankle hurt; it throbbed at the break and shot pain through the shin; she started favoring the other leg, causing shin splints. Dr. Dixon gave her "horse pills" to relieve it; when she ran out of prescription pail killers she started taking 5 or 6 ibuprofen before practice, three in the middle.
• Weight became an obsessive struggle. She was 16 and not menstruating, her body fat percentage below 10%, weighing 98 lbs at over 5'0, and she saw herself as fat. The other Jen at the gym was 87 lbs. The weight she'd lost so easily when she started began to come back. Unless the scale was moving downward, she was failing.
• She didn't eat at all before practice, having an apple or banana after weigh-in. Calories were 500 on weekdays, less on Mondays. On Fridays and Saturdays she didn't count. Sundays she put on a non-breathable "space suit" sweat suit and aerobicized for hours and didn't eat at all.
• Several girls had moved into the apartment, including the other Jen and two girls named Kristy and Alyssa. Her mom was happy to have them–the camaraderie looked like normal teenage friendships. In fact, it was centered on weight loss tips and competitiveness. At the gym they were at different levels. Other Jen and Kristy had a top goal of making elite and qualifying for nationals. Alyssa was a closer competitor, but a few skills and medals behind. The real competition was on the scale, and Other Jen was the winner, never crossing 90 pounds
• One Sunday, when Other Jen was away visiting her family in New York, Jen was poking around in her things and found a stash of laxatives hidden in a manila envelope in her sock drawer
• More and more often, Jen, her mom, and her brother stayed in Allentown on the weekends and their father either stayed in New Jersey or came to visit.
• After a Saturday-evening snack session, Jen swiped two Ex-lax from Other Jen's supply. The taste was disgusting. It became a every Saturday thing, never buying her own. Never more than two at a time, never on a day proceeding a workout.
• Despite the rivalry, they were friends. Other Jen would never win in the gym, Jen would never win on the scale.
• Limited food intake and enhanced purging seemed to fuel her energy–she would translate the little headedness as energetic. Her fear of the coaches also pushed her false sense of energy
• Coaches would say things like "Jesus, Sey. If you hadn't put on that half pound, maybe you'd be able to stay on the beam." Or, for girls who gained more than a pound in a day, "I don't coach fat gymnasts!" Those gymnasts were threatened with removal from an upcoming competition or being banned from the gym
• The worst was directed at Lisa. She was barely ten, tiny, but she had a muscular frame and obese parents. During stretching, Mrs. Strauss announced on the microphone, "Hi, everyone! Look at Lisa there on the mat. She gained two pounds today. Lisa, at this rate you'll look like your mother in no time. Is that what you want?" Lisa's mother was watching the practice. Nothing happened. Lisa may have cried a bit out of embarrassment.
• There were also non-weight insults and rants. Mr. Strauss would throw things–a metal folding chair was the biggest thing she ever saw. The girl ducked in time. She went back to the chalk bucket for another turn, he slammed the door to his office. There were more mundane insults: Lazy; baby; You don't even try; You're wasting my time; You never give me anything
• Verbal abuse, day after day, forms a deep hurt. Jen was unraveling. But she persevered through US Championship. Hungry and taped nearly into a cast, she placed 7th AA and 3rd on floor. If 1985 had been an Olympic year, she would have qualified. She beat Angie, still training with Lolo. John was vindicated. Jen was happy but not surprised–she knew when she went to Parkettes, if she followed instructions, she would succeed.

 

[QuietColours]

Chapter 20

• Family changes
  • Made the move to Allentown official, selling their dream house and buying a generic tract house with a pool and plenty of space for gymnasts to board. Her father would commute the two hours each way now
  • Gave up the house they'd loved, the garden her father had landscaped on his own. Her father was rarely home, between the hours he worked and his commute. If he was too tired to make the drive, he claimed he slept at the office. In reality, he was having an affair with his office manager. Everything in the marriage was about the kids (note: it seems particularly about Jen), and the marriage was simply neglected completely. There were no signs of normal adult existence in the Allentown house
  • Jen spent seven hours in the gym a day, five or six days a week. Summers had five hour morning practices and another three in the afternoon. Mom was the chauffeur. She washed clothes and cooked food no one ate. She adopted their eating habits, surviving on diet soda and losing 10 pounds. Jen can only imagine she found the same solace in calorie counting that the girls did. She claimed she couldn't bring herself to eat around them, but Jen thought it was a competition
  • Jen was moving toward depression, compulsive disordered eating, and self-loathing. She was surly, disappointed with her performance during practice, pained by injuries, and anxious about her weight. Her mother left her to her own devices
  • In the fall, started at a new high school with the other three girls. The local public wouldn't accommodate their training, so they went to Central Catholic High, home to the Irish and Italian Allentown families. They were dismissed at 12:30 and no one cared how much school they missed as long as they kept their grades up. Jen and Alyssa (also Jewish) were allowed to skip theology.
  • The 12 Parkettes attending were tormented by the other girls, most of whom wouldn't attend college, would marry upon graduating and have their first child in a year
  • Chris also started a new school, the local public high school, since his practices didn't begin until 5 o'clock. It was notoriously violent and full of racially divided gangs. He became part of the in crowd. Still scrawny, he was good looking and got the attention of the girls. Jen rarely spent any time with him. While she did aerobics on the weekends, she saw the parade of girlfriends coming through. Chris was cool, and she envied his social network and romantic life.
• Injury
  • Workouts intensified because Jen was qualified for World Trials. She was more tired, eating less, training more. Longer hours in the gym, less sleep at night.
  • Weight was a point of conflict. Coach Robin pressured Jen to lose three pounds by Trials by any means necessary. She suggested vasoline. Jen still isn't sure what she wanted her to do with it. Jen put herself on a fruit-and-laxative diet instead
  • She'd finally started buying her own
  • Three days of this, on a 95 degree day, she was on her fifth beam routine having to stick 10 in a row to move on to the next event. She missed the beam with her foot on a RO but through herself into the BHS anyway and came down on her head on the beam. Semiconscious on the mat, she touched her head and found blood.
  • Next thing she remembers, she was in Dr. Dixon's office with Mrs. Strauss instruction no stitches in her head, she had Trials in a week and couldn't go with a shaved head. She got her (broken) fingers taped and a band aid, and a warning she might have some bruising around her eyes as the head bled downward into her face
  • She woke up looking normal, but by the end of the morning kids were whispering and she realized she had two bad black eyes. A teacher took her aside to ask if she was being beaten at home, and she explained it was a gymnastics accident. The teacher was relieved. Her mother found this hysterical–the idea either of her parents would hurt her was ludicrous to both of them
  • She told her mom the bruises didn't hurt. They didn't, compared to the broken fingers, ankle, and shin splints.
• Trials
  • Eyes were still badly bruised, and the meet would be televised. A hairstylist, Cathy, came to the competition with them. For this meet, Cathy would have to do Jen's makeup as well, getting pancake stage makeup.
  • She didn't conceal the bruises for the pre-meet workout. Judges whispered. Some jokingly asked John if he did that to her.
  • First day of competition was compulsories. Jen was known for these. Her mom had to leave because of nerves before the meet even started; Jen didn't notice. She nailed every routine and finished just out of first, behind Kelly Garrison
  • She found her father in the stands and asked about her mom–he told her she had to leave because of diarrhea. It felt the same as when Jen had broken her ankle and her mother couldn't stop crying and Jen felt she needed to comfort her mother.
  • She called her mother and had to put her father on to get her to believe she was in second. Her mom thought she was trying to make her feel bad for missing the meet–she didn't think Jen could really make the team. But if she didn't, why couldn't she watch the meet with an attitude of, "What happens, happens?"
  • Second day was more pressure than she'd ever dealt with before. It took Cathy an hour to apply Jen's makeup. She was shaky from lack of food and sleep, but perfectly coiffed
  • She was on bars first, and had a new release, a Tkachev, new for female gymnasts at the time. When she missed it, she either landed on the bar or on her face. She hit it at the competition
  • Beam was next. She had two tumbling runs–BHS BHS LO and RO BHS and a double back dismount. She was confident, but that can be dangerous on beam. But she hit for a 9.7
  • She finished second (technically third, with two girls sharing the title). One year after going to Parkettes, after one broken ankle, two black eyes, one eating disorder, many boxes of laxatives, three broken fingers, and splintered shins later

 

[rlayt]

I wonder how much pain she has now?

 

[Big_rock_show]

Reading this book had me confused. Jen has been outspoken in more recent years about the horrors of the sport, and there certainly are situations in which she was treated poorly and was affected by the politics and bias within the sport. HOWEVER, she seems to be the driving force behind her own desire to win at any cost. I'm confused as to why she feels so negatively about her experience in the recent years.

 

[QuietColours]

I think it's a both thing. She recognizes that she was an active contributor in her own misery, and that the kind of person she was would probably have self destructed in whatever activity she chose.

But she was also subjected to and witnessed heaps of emotional and verbal abuse, threats of physical abuse, dangerously negligent coaching and disregard for athletes' well being, encouragement of eating disorders, and was under several coaches later identified (and some rumored at the time) to be sexual predators.

There were a lot of problems endemic to the sport, and she was someone who was going to self-destruct no matter what. Putting a win-at-all-costs person in a win-at-all-costs environment never ends well