Olympic Fever: The Chelle Stack Story (unfinished book by Carrol Stack)

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I was livid, but I couldn't say a word. Parents aren't allowed to file
complaints. If you raise a stink and file one anyway, you can just consider
your daughter's career over and done with. The only thing that parents can do
is complain to their coach, but the coaches always respond the same way. They
don't say, "We have to get back in the gym and do better," they say, "We have
to get judge so-and-so on our side." Bribery is what they're talking about.
(When I say bribery, I mean back-scrathing.)

Dianne Durham didn't get her invitation to the American Cup. Calvinita (her
mother) was saying it was because she's black. I didn't believe her, I
thought it was just sour grapes. But then, in 1988 when Chelle went to the
American Cup, I learned later that Chelle had not been invited, that Bela had
withheld Rhonda Faehn's invitation because he wanted Chelle to go. I gather
that's how Mary Lou got invited to the American Cup her first time. The USGF
sent the invitations to the coaches, not the gymnasts.

Mary Lou and Dianne were supposed to go to the World Championships one year
before the Olympics and Bela put out this horrible report that they were
injured. There was nothing wrong with them. And the USGF went along with it.
They don't require anything in writing. But that wouldn't matter anyway
because Bela can pay anybody, especially doctors, to give him what he wants.

I always knew the judging was funny. Mary Lou 9.9 with 3 steps on vault.
It's always, "We know she's capable of doing it." They don't say that in
swimming.

Bela was telling Chelle that she was going to get invited to the American
Cup. Before she got her invitation. He knew it was going to happen. She got
it just a couple of weeks before the competition, and those invitations go
out months in advance. That meant that somebody had gotten hurt and scratched
to make room for Chelle. But nobody was hurt.
$40 a pop for verifications, except Elites. Sharon Weber always came down.
She's always the most expensive.

Jackie Fie (the queen judge) was coming to town. Bela told us we had to get
her a gift. Why we had to do it, I don't know. I thought it was wrong, and I
said so. She never gave us birthday gifts. It was bribery. They bought her a
14K gold bracelet. It hit us parents for about $50 apiece. We didn't have
that kind of money to throw away, especially when we weren't there when Bela
gave it to her. Marta and Bela got the brownie points, and we paid for them.
And Bela's attitude was that we should have gotten her something "nicer."
Chelle didn't get anything out of it. I certainly wouldn't have done it after
the Olympics.

I never made of habit of getting to know the judges, I didn't think that was
my place. Phoebe's mother and Brandy's mother knew everybody. I was wrong. I
didn't play the game right. I didn't play it at all. You've got to sweet-talk
and buy judges or you don't get the scores.

I spoke to Audrey Schweyer once when Chelle was switching gyms and she was
pushing the gym in her area of the country. The ones that I'm sure she gets
the most money from.

Banquet in Houston, 1988. I just wanted to see what was going on. One of the
girls got so drunk she had to be carried out. Alcohol was flowing freely.
Rick Newman was so drunk, he couldn't tell which way was up. The boys and the
coaches had beer and wine, and they were giving it to the little girls. A lot
of coaches have "things" for their girls. Rick especially. Whether any of
them have ever done anything about it, I don't know. I don't think I'd want
to know. It was just a big party. Kristy Krafft (a coach from Oklahoma) was
the worst I've ever seen. Every meet she's drunk. This is the reason coaches
go to meets, so they can get real drunk. The parents too.

The coaches say, "Go to our room and don't you move." The girls haven't
eaten since 2 o'clock. If the meet starts at six, you eat at two, you get
there at three for an hour of stretching, from five to six you have workout,
six to seven you have timed warm-ups. Then you have the meet for three or
four hours. You come back to the hotel, they're not going to feed you. Bela
didn't want you seeing or touching his kids, they go to their room. They
don't eat. They're machines. Long periods without eating.

 

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Some of the other coaches would let their girls carry a coke or a snack. But
you do not ever EVER put anything in your mouth in front of Bela. You're
gonna get fat. He sees you instantly blow up six pounds. He makes half his
kids function on salads. That's all they can have when they're out on a meet
with him is salads. One a day. Chelle would run out of gas all the time. You
could see it. She couldn't pull the last part off. Chelle was big eater,
which Bela hated, and he would say she had a "watermelon stomach!" She didn't
have an ounce of fat. But she had a little girl belly. Like all little girls
do. That bothered him. He constantly told her she looked like a spider. A
belly with legs and arms sticking out. She hated him for that.

Chelle would report that kind of thing nightly. Or I would ask what he said
today, and she say, "Same stuff he always says." "Y'all were lined up for a
long time. What was he saying?." "Well, he didn't pick on me tonight. He went
off on somebody else." They would stand there for forty or forty-five
minutes, at attention in line, while he took off on somebody about how fat
they were, how stupid they were. They couldn't look around, they watched him
the whole time. Humiliation. The closer it got to a meet, the worse it got.

He had the proven track record. You go somewhere else and you can't get the
judging. He can get you into meets that you can't get into. He has pull. And
he does teach discipline. I didn't know at the time how much fear he
employed. Well, yes I did. But I knew he had results. At the time, the end
justified the means. I was no different than anybody else.

Our girls made the Olympic team and Seagram's was paying for one parent of
every single Olympian to go to Seoul. USGF said, "Oh, no. We're not going to
be represented by alcohol." They just told us we couldn't accept their money.
"We want to go see our daughters in Korea." "No. Sorry." Mike Jacki (the
director) said no way. We had to get irate. We wanted to go to the Olympics!
Finally they came up with their own sponsorship program. USGF gave each
family $4500, which took both me and Frank over there. But it only happened
because we raised such a stink. They didn't want us over there. I dont
understand their rhymes or reasoning.

They put on a big show up front. Mike Jacki was having to explain himself on
television about the limousines and parties. He just said they're not going
on.

The trust fund jeopardized college scholarships. Chelle was only fourteen. I
just needed to pay Bela's gym bills.

Kathy Johnson and I decided that Chelle and Brandy would room together
whenever they travelled together. Because they didn't drink. The girls aren't
watched after dark. They go where they want with who they want. Nobody checks
on them. American Cup was always the worst. The banquet would let out at 1 AM
or so, and nobody saw that the girls got back to their rooms. The coaches
went out drinking. Bela and Marta were always out hobnobbing with judges.

But Bela did do something on Chelle's first day back that made us all a
little angry. He removed the high-scoring tricks from her floor exercise that
we were so proud of. Jack Thomas had taught her . . . But Bela took one look
at it and said, "Looks like hell. Get rid of it." Nobody is allowed to do
tricks that Bela's chosen stars aren't doing, and however much he seemed to
like her at that time, Chelle was not his chosen star.

Kathy Johnson went to the Chiunichi Cup, and got to be a part of the team. I
don't know how she got to go. I never got to go to any of the meets. I've
never figured out how you do that. She took care of Chelle. Bela got mad at
her cause she broke her foot. he wouldn't feed her or anything. He told her
to go to her room and stay. Kathy would take her to Kentucky fried chicken or
something.

It was just as humiliating for me to sit there knowing what Chelle was being
put through. I took some comfort out of the fact that, no matter how much
they postured and bragged, the other parents were just as miserable. It was
our inability to admit this to each other that allowed us to let it go on.

* END*

 

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It's roughly written but absolutely raw to read. She understands that they were crazy (and got that way fast)--it's astonishing reading about how much Chelle didn't even like gymnastics and they put her through all this.

I doubt she could ever publish it, it's multiple liable suits waiting to happen. Certainly not in this raw format.

I wonder what she thinks about it all now. Chelle did some college gymnastics, but only a couple years, and a stint at Cirque, coached and owned a gym, and was a brevet, so she never got to leave the sport. Can you imagine your family deciding at 9 you're going to the Olympics for a sport you don't even like and putting you through all that, blaming you for their bankruptcy and losing their home and car when you just keep asking to quit?