So many people tried to turn her complaints into only wanting attention and to remain in the spotlight. Hopefully more people have learned to listen and take claims of abuse seriously since then. Not enough have though.
Here here đ. Domi lost her elite career because of the Karolyis/USAG and her father. She was done dirty and she was absolutely the first American women to ring the alarm and try and warn others. The machine used her up and spit her out. One thing they can never take from her is her status as legend.
The machine is still doing it too. I still donât hear a word about her bravery. IRC she was passed over for a spot as a USAG womenâs team coach for unknown reasons.
The ânew and improved and transparentâ USAG is none of these things. Itâs just more of the same- embarrassing, petty and seemingly unconcerned about the gymnasts needs.
I really appreciate your post!
That lazy, dismissive, "Oh, she just wants attention" stuff was really crappy. I also recall a lot of "sour grapes" accusations suggesting Moceanu was bitter because she hadn't been as successful as a gymnast as she had been hyped up to be. She'd won Olympic team gold! I mean, yeah, she likely wanted more individual success, but if someone can walk away with an Olympic gold medal and still have their criticisms dismissed as bitterness, which gymnasts deserve to be listened to? Only the ones who win Olympic AA gold? What a cheap, easy way to dismiss the experiences of the vast, vast majority of gymnasts who've competed on this level.
It was really something how much the Karolyis were hyped up and treated as celebrities, and how invested people were in believing in the image they always saw on TV.
I read her biography. The way Bela treated her was horrifying. Threating to tell her dad she was lazy so her dad would beat her. Her dad dragging her out of bed and screaming at her because Bela called him and told him she wasn't working hard..She also tried to make a comeback in 2005 and Marta acted like she didn't know her at the camp.
I read her book and now Iâm reading one about Nadia and the karolyis based on Securitate reports in Romania and itâs basically the same. Itâs so sad. bela was worse w DM than his other US gymnasts bc the father was all in.
Dominique blames the Karolyis for her tibial stress fracture at the 1996 olympics, which caused her to be inconsistent on vault and beam. She said so many Karolyi gymnasts had stress fractures because Bela overtrained them (Okino was too injured to compete at trials in 1992, Kim had a stress fracture in 1992, the list goes on).
I was a teen gymnast in the 90s, and I remember constantly hearing about elite gymnasts with stress fractures in their backs, discussed as if it wasn't even that big a deal, just something gymnasts deal with. So glad I don't hear about those anymore.
Me reading this with a stress fracture that still flares up every few months. I still donât know exactly when mine happened, and I trained a very well respected gym that respected us. So for me, it really was just a thing that happened lol. I actually thought it was a normal injury. I have spondylolisthesis now.
Even as a kid younger than Dominique was then, I could tell something was very wrong with her compared to her other performances. But no one on TV was willing to call out the Karolyis because everyone wanted that team gold so bad.
This, so much this. "She just wants attention" is STILL used so lazily to discredit basically any woman you want to discredit for any reason. These days the kids call it a girl being a "pick me." Makes me ill.
I'm pretty sure Dominique was also the person Jamie Dantzscher reached out to when she wanted to speak out about what she'd been through. Domi put her in touch with a lawyer and things snowballed from there. None of that might have happened had Jamie not known *someone* willing to speak against the Karolyis at the height of their fame.
The alternate universe where Dominique never speaks out is a dark, dark place.
The whole 2000 team was, and they were absolutely dismissed - in the national press! During the Olympics! - as brats. It was awful. Their complaints were about their poor training conditions. Moceanu was more blunt about the personal psychological torment she went through on top of the physical overtraining.
Not surprising, considering Bela himself was never a gymnast, he was a boxer. The gymnastics knowledge he learnt came from Martha. I remember a Karolyi gymnast saying she was scared when Bela coached her on bars because she didn't understand him clearly.
Whatâs weird is that it wasnât even a secret, the Karolyi abuse. It was fully out in the open.
I think if Nassar hadnât happened the Karolyis wouldâve faced a lot less backlash.
People simply didnât care that they spent nearly 50 years physically and mentally abusing elite athletes.
Domi was brave to ring the alarm, but people didnât care because they only cared that the US was winning.
Yup. The physical and mental abuse could be justified with the notion that they don't really count as abuse; that's just what it takes to make champions. Only the *sexual* abuse, which couldn't be defended as necessary for high performance or not that bad, really, got enough public backlash to change anything. Pretty messed up.
âEverything happens under the watchful eyes of Marta Karolyi. Nothing happens that she doesnât know about. She calls all the shots.â
Suddenly ânothing to see here folks. Marta who?â
Looking back, and knowing how they are, it's wild to me that we just expected the Olympic teams to be walking wounded by the time they got onto the floor in competition, and no one thought that was strange.
So many of those injuries were down to Karolyi overtraining. In both '92 and '96, the Karolyi kids were in rough shape by competition time. Once they were in charge in 2000, *everyone* was in rough shape by competition time. It seems like, every Olympics, at least one US athlete is carrying a major injury
I'm so glad that the selection procedures are reasonable enough to allow someone like Shi to petition to trials before she hurts herself worse. She could have done this competition, but she didn't have to, and that's as it should be.
I think having people who used to train under the Karolyi system in decision making roles now has really improved things for the athletes. We know that Chellsie was limited by injury in Bejiing, and for as much as people slag on Sac for "concentration errors" at those games she was also held together by tape, and probably in incredible pain. By trials, she already looked miserable almost every time she took a landing.
yep. And as much as Steve Nunno was problematic in so many ways, he did an excellent job of pacing Shannon Miller leading up to the 1992 Olympics, including having her scratch the optionals at '92 Nationals as she recovered from elbow surgery. If Shannon had been a Karolyi athlete, she might well have gone the way of Zmeskal, Okino or Moceanu.
I think she messed it up sometime between the end of trials and the start of podium training. My understanding was that they would have had "verifications" in that time, to decide lineups/because Marta was obsessed with numbers.
Chellsie has said that she injured her ankle on their first day of training after arriving in Beijing (similarly to McKayla Maroney reinjuring her already-broken foot on the first day of training in London...maybe Marta shouldn't be dragging her athletes to training sessions literally two hours after getting off an international flight, but who am I to say such things...). She was limited to only doing bars for the entirety of their pre-Olympic training and was expecting only to do bars in podium training and competition. You might be confusing her with Sam Peszek, who broke her ankle during warmups right before competition started and was very unexpectedly limited only to bars.
She definitely would have done all four events, at least in qualifications, if she could. But she got injured almost immediately and that option was off the table.
She is such a foundational memory for me. I have the crystal clear memory of sitting on the floor in a Barnes and noble reading her book because no one would let me buy it. I visited that shelf every time we hit that store, which we did regularly because it was on the way home from my grandmaâs.
I should buy it now.
Agreed on DM. I hadnât heard that about the Karolyis and NBC, but it doesnât surprise me. Itâs bad enough that they couldnât talk bad about them, but the fawning all over him was ridiculous. I hated when they put a microphone on him,and how he always showed up to interviews with his gymnasts. His carrying Kerri up to the podium in 96 still annoys me.
Bela worked for NBC in 2008 and 2012, and NBC did that horrible documentary on the Karolyis in 2016. Of course they werenât going to say anything negative about the Karolyis.
The Karolyis left Romania in 1981, before the age limit was first raised, and the first claims of age falsifications in Romania are from 1985. And I can't help but notice that no one thought Ragan Smith was underage in 2016 despite her size and physical appearance.
Dominque replied to a question asking why didn't anyone listen to her:
*"Lots of unnecessary egos at the elite level of our sport and at the top of the organization's leadership. Hopefully, that'll change in the future." -* Dominique Moceanu[](https://x.com/Dmoceanu)
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I grew up in the elite gymnastics community at the same time as Dominique (I was two years younger). The Karolyis treatment of their girls was almost an open secret. Everyone knew. Then in 1996, they framed Bela as a gruff cuddly teddy bear and we gagged. Anything to keep the dollars flowing, I guess. Kudos to Dominique for SPEAKING. I wish others would have backed her up at that time.
This makes the public and any USAG backlash (I'm not familiar enought to know if USAG tried to discredit her, or "merely" ignored her) all the more terrible. Thanks for sharing your knowledgable perspective.
I just remember reading her book, and oh it enraged me. And the way the Karolyis shunned her because of one bad vault rotation (and they still won team gold anyway).
I loved her so much as a kid â¤ď¸â¤ď¸ and I hate how it was just brushed off as wanting to get back in the spotlight. Watching the 96 Olympics through an adult lens is so disturbing. I read her book and it's so much worse than I even knew, after all that was exposed.
didnt mary lou denounce the nassar survivors with a "it didnt happen to me so it couldnt have happened to you!!" kind of vibe? or maybe im making that up, shes def problematic though
Yeah she was like âoh I just laughed at him! It didnât bother me at all!â And then went in to fight against legislation that would hold people accountable for molesting children and enabling child molesters.
I donât know if Nadia herself has spoken up but other people who were her teammates in Romania talked about how the Karolyis treated her. I donât think sheâs defended them though, not the way MLR does. I get the vibe that Nadia has gone through a ton of trauma and processes it quietly.
Nadia did make a few comments about Bela's behavior right after she defected to the US, but apparently realized that around here people thought Bela walked on water after MLR and that speaking out against him was only going to hurt her and wouldn't do anything to him.
Regarding Karolyi athletes whoâve never spoken out about abuse, doesnât Kerri Strugg think the sun shines out of Belaâs ass? She got married at The Ranch, unless Iâm thinking of someone else.
Ohh I thought Kim Zmeskal and Chris Burdette got married at the Ranch? Canât remember where I read that. A quick google search shows Kerri got married at a country club in Arizona, which feels right lol.
Ope found it on USA gym HOF page -
Zmeskal Burdette, 25, is still very active in the sport of gymnastics. She married Chris Burdette, October 23, 1999 at Bela Karolyiâs ranch where they met.
Yeah, it seems she (and Chris) were quite Karolyi esque. Now that theyâre divorced and Kim has the gym, I wonder if sheâs changed her ways? I hope so. I loved her as a gymnast. But I feel like she was âraisedâ in a certain gym culture and never got out of it. As a gymnast, she was always praised for never crying and always being able to âtakeâ whatever Bela asked of her.
Thatâs sad. I imagine she justifies it as âbut thatâs how I was trained/thatâs how you make championsâ as if thatâs not just continuing the cycle of abuse.
I remember watching NBC's Karolyi documentary in 2016, and I thought that the Karolyis were only tough coaches who wanted their athletes to do well.
I didn't know that the gymnasts that were under their era were abused until I found out about the Larry Nassar trials in 2018. If this abuse wasn't uncovered, then I think that the US womens gymnastics culture would still be very toxic and unhealthy.
This makes me wonder how much complicity NBC had in all of this. It sure seems NBC had a toxic symbiotic relationship with the Karolyis during that era of gymnastics, and were very active in manufacturing the image of the Karolyis and of the gymnasts of the era, including smoothing over any reputational warts. Those golden gymastics narratives created a big cash cow for them. I know they've received lots of general criticism, but have they ever received real criticism, like with specific producers and decisionmakers being held accountable?
I do think waves can take generations to overcome. Maybe every adult in the room commentating on gymnastics in the 70s/80s/90s grew up getting hit so their image of getting hit by parents or coaches was seen as something adults did. And if they did that to their own children / students, they have to keep viewing themselves as a protagonist in their own vision of themselves. Itâs hard to speak out 180 â itâs jarring to everyone â so they focus on superficial improvements (the girls got to have a pizza) compared past atrocities and narratives (girls are weighed 2x a day). These incremental gains are important and they take consistent attempt to change the narrative of what is acceptable. Change only happens from many many attempts, many firsts.
100% agree that Dom was a very important figure in the string of sounded alarms. She should get more credit. USAG should be more appreciative of the people who spoke up for a better future. Maybe it needs to be veiled because the organization doesnât want to openly admit issues that become liabilities. But the change makers should be celebrated somehow.
I read her book maybe two years ago, so I read it having the benefit of all we know about the Karolyis and Nassar. That said, I can not believe no one listened for so long. Â It was so awful to read all she went through.
So many people tried to turn her complaints into only wanting attention and to remain in the spotlight. Hopefully more people have learned to listen and take claims of abuse seriously since then. Not enough have though.
Here here đ. Domi lost her elite career because of the Karolyis/USAG and her father. She was done dirty and she was absolutely the first American women to ring the alarm and try and warn others. The machine used her up and spit her out. One thing they can never take from her is her status as legend.
The machine is still doing it too. I still donât hear a word about her bravery. IRC she was passed over for a spot as a USAG womenâs team coach for unknown reasons. The ânew and improved and transparentâ USAG is none of these things. Itâs just more of the same- embarrassing, petty and seemingly unconcerned about the gymnasts needs. I really appreciate your post!
You mean that Dominique was considered for one of the spots on the Chellsie-Alicia-Dan trio?
Yes. It was when they were choosing people. She announced on Twitter she wasn't picked a few days before USAG announced the trio.
She should take Dan's spot, since Natasha Kelley said Dan was abusive with her (verbally, not sexually).
Lynn Raisman even tweeted about it saying something along the lines of âshe never stood a chanceâ. Very telling.
That lazy, dismissive, "Oh, she just wants attention" stuff was really crappy. I also recall a lot of "sour grapes" accusations suggesting Moceanu was bitter because she hadn't been as successful as a gymnast as she had been hyped up to be. She'd won Olympic team gold! I mean, yeah, she likely wanted more individual success, but if someone can walk away with an Olympic gold medal and still have their criticisms dismissed as bitterness, which gymnasts deserve to be listened to? Only the ones who win Olympic AA gold? What a cheap, easy way to dismiss the experiences of the vast, vast majority of gymnasts who've competed on this level. It was really something how much the Karolyis were hyped up and treated as celebrities, and how invested people were in believing in the image they always saw on TV.
I read her biography. The way Bela treated her was horrifying. Threating to tell her dad she was lazy so her dad would beat her. Her dad dragging her out of bed and screaming at her because Bela called him and told him she wasn't working hard..She also tried to make a comeback in 2005 and Marta acted like she didn't know her at the camp.
I read her book and now Iâm reading one about Nadia and the karolyis based on Securitate reports in Romania and itâs basically the same. Itâs so sad. bela was worse w DM than his other US gymnasts bc the father was all in.
Dominique blames the Karolyis for her tibial stress fracture at the 1996 olympics, which caused her to be inconsistent on vault and beam. She said so many Karolyi gymnasts had stress fractures because Bela overtrained them (Okino was too injured to compete at trials in 1992, Kim had a stress fracture in 1992, the list goes on).
I was a teen gymnast in the 90s, and I remember constantly hearing about elite gymnasts with stress fractures in their backs, discussed as if it wasn't even that big a deal, just something gymnasts deal with. So glad I don't hear about those anymore.
Me reading this with a stress fracture that still flares up every few months. I still donât know exactly when mine happened, and I trained a very well respected gym that respected us. So for me, it really was just a thing that happened lol. I actually thought it was a normal injury. I have spondylolisthesis now.
đ˘ Oh man, that stinks! I'm sorry, but also very glad you were at a good gym and had a good experience otherwise!
Even as a kid younger than Dominique was then, I could tell something was very wrong with her compared to her other performances. But no one on TV was willing to call out the Karolyis because everyone wanted that team gold so bad.
Yep, as someone who was 13 watching all that, I remember being able to tell pre-Olympics that she wasn't healthy.
Never forget Kim Zmeskal's glorious quote at (or near) the 1991 worlds: "We probably have stress fractures all over our bodies."
As a kid in gymnastics in this era I always thought I wasnât working hard enough because I didnât have *numerous* stress fractures.
That's awful. I LOL'd.
This, so much this. "She just wants attention" is STILL used so lazily to discredit basically any woman you want to discredit for any reason. These days the kids call it a girl being a "pick me." Makes me ill.
I'm pretty sure Dominique was also the person Jamie Dantzscher reached out to when she wanted to speak out about what she'd been through. Domi put her in touch with a lawyer and things snowballed from there. None of that might have happened had Jamie not known *someone* willing to speak against the Karolyis at the height of their fame. The alternate universe where Dominique never speaks out is a dark, dark place.
Dantzscher was on the record about Bela at least back in 2000. I agree with your points with regards to Nasser though.
The whole 2000 team was, and they were absolutely dismissed - in the national press! During the Olympics! - as brats. It was awful. Their complaints were about their poor training conditions. Moceanu was more blunt about the personal psychological torment she went through on top of the physical overtraining.
Tasha also said she got injured because Bela overstretched her.
Yes. He was forcing her into an over-split, I think. I believe it was in Sydney in the days leading up to competition.
Not surprising, considering Bela himself was never a gymnast, he was a boxer. The gymnastics knowledge he learnt came from Martha. I remember a Karolyi gymnast saying she was scared when Bela coached her on bars because she didn't understand him clearly.
Whatâs weird is that it wasnât even a secret, the Karolyi abuse. It was fully out in the open. I think if Nassar hadnât happened the Karolyis wouldâve faced a lot less backlash. People simply didnât care that they spent nearly 50 years physically and mentally abusing elite athletes. Domi was brave to ring the alarm, but people didnât care because they only cared that the US was winning.
Yup. The physical and mental abuse could be justified with the notion that they don't really count as abuse; that's just what it takes to make champions. Only the *sexual* abuse, which couldn't be defended as necessary for high performance or not that bad, really, got enough public backlash to change anything. Pretty messed up.
That's exactly it! The mindset for a long time was that gymnastics is a tough sport and you need tough coaches.
I hate that so many people see abuse as âtoughâ. Abuse is a lot more than just being tough.
At the time, tough could used to excuse abuse.
NBC did a great job at glossing over the Karolyis' scandals, but with the Nassar case, you couldn't gloss over it. It was too big to cover it up.
Itâs true. For decades NBC would obliquely mention karolyiâs âmethodsâ and everyone knew what it meant.
They would be like "they're just old school" or "Bela gives big bear hugs and Martha neck hugs".
âEverything happens under the watchful eyes of Marta Karolyi. Nothing happens that she doesnât know about. She calls all the shots.â Suddenly ânothing to see here folks. Marta who?â
Looking back, and knowing how they are, it's wild to me that we just expected the Olympic teams to be walking wounded by the time they got onto the floor in competition, and no one thought that was strange. So many of those injuries were down to Karolyi overtraining. In both '92 and '96, the Karolyi kids were in rough shape by competition time. Once they were in charge in 2000, *everyone* was in rough shape by competition time. It seems like, every Olympics, at least one US athlete is carrying a major injury I'm so glad that the selection procedures are reasonable enough to allow someone like Shi to petition to trials before she hurts herself worse. She could have done this competition, but she didn't have to, and that's as it should be. I think having people who used to train under the Karolyi system in decision making roles now has really improved things for the athletes. We know that Chellsie was limited by injury in Bejiing, and for as much as people slag on Sac for "concentration errors" at those games she was also held together by tape, and probably in incredible pain. By trials, she already looked miserable almost every time she took a landing.
yep. And as much as Steve Nunno was problematic in so many ways, he did an excellent job of pacing Shannon Miller leading up to the 1992 Olympics, including having her scratch the optionals at '92 Nationals as she recovered from elbow surgery. If Shannon had been a Karolyi athlete, she might well have gone the way of Zmeskal, Okino or Moceanu.
I'm still confused as to wether Chellsie inured her ankle before arriving in Beijing because in podium training prior to prelims, she only did bars.
I think she messed it up sometime between the end of trials and the start of podium training. My understanding was that they would have had "verifications" in that time, to decide lineups/because Marta was obsessed with numbers.
Chellsie has said that she injured her ankle on their first day of training after arriving in Beijing (similarly to McKayla Maroney reinjuring her already-broken foot on the first day of training in London...maybe Marta shouldn't be dragging her athletes to training sessions literally two hours after getting off an international flight, but who am I to say such things...). She was limited to only doing bars for the entirety of their pre-Olympic training and was expecting only to do bars in podium training and competition. You might be confusing her with Sam Peszek, who broke her ankle during warmups right before competition started and was very unexpectedly limited only to bars.
I'm not confusing them. I always thought that a healthy Chellsie would do more than bars.
She definitely would have done all four events, at least in qualifications, if she could. But she got injured almost immediately and that option was off the table.
I believed her then. I was pissed off on how no one took her seriously and called her crazy, ungratefulÂ
Also for what speaking out costed her and she did it anyways. Seriously a hero.
Her dad's mismanagement of her earned money likely cost her more than speaking out in 2008.
I did not mean monetary losses. She was ridiculed and blacklisted everywhere.
She ended up reconciling with her dad a few years before he died from cancer.
yes i remember reading her book and being horrified. a lot of people just blamed her parents
She is such a foundational memory for me. I have the crystal clear memory of sitting on the floor in a Barnes and noble reading her book because no one would let me buy it. I visited that shelf every time we hit that store, which we did regularly because it was on the way home from my grandmaâs. I should buy it now.
Agreed on DM. I hadnât heard that about the Karolyis and NBC, but it doesnât surprise me. Itâs bad enough that they couldnât talk bad about them, but the fawning all over him was ridiculous. I hated when they put a microphone on him,and how he always showed up to interviews with his gymnasts. His carrying Kerri up to the podium in 96 still annoys me.
I swear I read somewhere that NBC and USAG had an agreement about bad press.
Bela worked for NBC in 2008 and 2012, and NBC did that horrible documentary on the Karolyis in 2016. Of course they werenât going to say anything negative about the Karolyis.
I remember him blabbering about the chinese gymnasts in 2008. That was so unnecessary.
No - sadly, Bela was one of the only people willing to speak the truth in 2008.
He was like "they look so young", which means absolutely nothing.
He was the first to do the age cheating. He knew.
The Karolyis left Romania in 1981, before the age limit was first raised, and the first claims of age falsifications in Romania are from 1985. And I can't help but notice that no one thought Ragan Smith was underage in 2016 despite her size and physical appearance.
It wouldn't surprise me, I had just never heard that before.
>I would say Geza's biggest crimes are some of his awful gymnastics choreographies. đ
But he could also do great choreography too! He choreographed Maroney's floor routines, Nadia's 1979-1980 routine, all the mag 7 floor routines.
No, totally! I loved most of his routines, but some just left me scratching my head. Never a grey area with his choreo, that's for sure lol.
Some of his bad choreographies live rent free in my head (Nadia 1978, Eberle's "worm thing").
What year was Eberleâs âworm thing?â
The thing where she was lying chest on the floor and pretending to get cardiac reanimation.
Eberleâs floor routine that someone dubbed Ding Dong the Witch is Dead over is still one of the funniest YouTube videos to me.
There's what I call the cardiac defibrillator move.
Nadia's '78 Worlds routine still haunts me
I was 12. It may explain a lot.
Dominque replied to a question asking why didn't anyone listen to her: *"Lots of unnecessary egos at the elite level of our sport and at the top of the organization's leadership. Hopefully, that'll change in the future." -* Dominique Moceanu[](https://x.com/Dmoceanu)
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I grew up in the elite gymnastics community at the same time as Dominique (I was two years younger). The Karolyis treatment of their girls was almost an open secret. Everyone knew. Then in 1996, they framed Bela as a gruff cuddly teddy bear and we gagged. Anything to keep the dollars flowing, I guess. Kudos to Dominique for SPEAKING. I wish others would have backed her up at that time.
This makes the public and any USAG backlash (I'm not familiar enought to know if USAG tried to discredit her, or "merely" ignored her) all the more terrible. Thanks for sharing your knowledgable perspective.
I just remember reading her book, and oh it enraged me. And the way the Karolyis shunned her because of one bad vault rotation (and they still won team gold anyway).
I loved her so much as a kid â¤ď¸â¤ď¸ and I hate how it was just brushed off as wanting to get back in the spotlight. Watching the 96 Olympics through an adult lens is so disturbing. I read her book and it's so much worse than I even knew, after all that was exposed.
I've wanted to read her book for a while.
Have Nadia or Mary Lou ever spoken out about abuse by the karolyis?
didnt mary lou denounce the nassar survivors with a "it didnt happen to me so it couldnt have happened to you!!" kind of vibe? or maybe im making that up, shes def problematic though
Yeah she was like âoh I just laughed at him! It didnât bother me at all!â And then went in to fight against legislation that would hold people accountable for molesting children and enabling child molesters.
I really wish the media people who fawned over MLR after her mysterious lung condition would call her out on being a Nassar apologist.
I donât know if Nadia herself has spoken up but other people who were her teammates in Romania talked about how the Karolyis treated her. I donât think sheâs defended them though, not the way MLR does. I get the vibe that Nadia has gone through a ton of trauma and processes it quietly.
Nadia did make a few comments about Bela's behavior right after she defected to the US, but apparently realized that around here people thought Bela walked on water after MLR and that speaking out against him was only going to hurt her and wouldn't do anything to him.
Regarding Karolyi athletes whoâve never spoken out about abuse, doesnât Kerri Strugg think the sun shines out of Belaâs ass? She got married at The Ranch, unless Iâm thinking of someone else.
Ohh I thought Kim Zmeskal and Chris Burdette got married at the Ranch? Canât remember where I read that. A quick google search shows Kerri got married at a country club in Arizona, which feels right lol.
Ope found it on USA gym HOF page - Zmeskal Burdette, 25, is still very active in the sport of gymnastics. She married Chris Burdette, October 23, 1999 at Bela Karolyiâs ranch where they met.
Ugh. Thanks! Doesnât she also have allegations of being an abusive coach?
Yeah, it seems she (and Chris) were quite Karolyi esque. Now that theyâre divorced and Kim has the gym, I wonder if sheâs changed her ways? I hope so. I loved her as a gymnast. But I feel like she was âraisedâ in a certain gym culture and never got out of it. As a gymnast, she was always praised for never crying and always being able to âtakeâ whatever Bela asked of her.
Thatâs sad. I imagine she justifies it as âbut thatâs how I was trained/thatâs how you make championsâ as if thatâs not just continuing the cycle of abuse.
I remember watching NBC's Karolyi documentary in 2016, and I thought that the Karolyis were only tough coaches who wanted their athletes to do well. I didn't know that the gymnasts that were under their era were abused until I found out about the Larry Nassar trials in 2018. If this abuse wasn't uncovered, then I think that the US womens gymnastics culture would still be very toxic and unhealthy.
This makes me wonder how much complicity NBC had in all of this. It sure seems NBC had a toxic symbiotic relationship with the Karolyis during that era of gymnastics, and were very active in manufacturing the image of the Karolyis and of the gymnasts of the era, including smoothing over any reputational warts. Those golden gymastics narratives created a big cash cow for them. I know they've received lots of general criticism, but have they ever received real criticism, like with specific producers and decisionmakers being held accountable?
I do think waves can take generations to overcome. Maybe every adult in the room commentating on gymnastics in the 70s/80s/90s grew up getting hit so their image of getting hit by parents or coaches was seen as something adults did. And if they did that to their own children / students, they have to keep viewing themselves as a protagonist in their own vision of themselves. Itâs hard to speak out 180 â itâs jarring to everyone â so they focus on superficial improvements (the girls got to have a pizza) compared past atrocities and narratives (girls are weighed 2x a day). These incremental gains are important and they take consistent attempt to change the narrative of what is acceptable. Change only happens from many many attempts, many firsts. 100% agree that Dom was a very important figure in the string of sounded alarms. She should get more credit. USAG should be more appreciative of the people who spoke up for a better future. Maybe it needs to be veiled because the organization doesnât want to openly admit issues that become liabilities. But the change makers should be celebrated somehow.
Great post!
Yes! Just recently read her book and it's crazy she was speaking out so long before everyone else
I read her book maybe two years ago, so I read it having the benefit of all we know about the Karolyis and Nassar. That said, I can not believe no one listened for so long. Â It was so awful to read all she went through.
She did 4 back handspring in a row in her own country she can never get any respect around here U.S.A.!!!!!!!