British Gymnastics Archives - GymPal https://gympal.org.uk/tag/british-gymnastics/ Gymnast Parent Alliance Sat, 04 Jul 2020 21:07:43 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.4 https://gympal.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/gyp-150x150.jpg British Gymnastics Archives - GymPal https://gympal.org.uk/tag/british-gymnastics/ 32 32 Gymnastics: Physical Abuse, Witnessing Abuse and the Futility of Complaining https://gympal.org.uk/2020/07/04/gymnastics-physical-abuse-witnessing-abuse-and-the-futility-of-complaining/ https://gympal.org.uk/2020/07/04/gymnastics-physical-abuse-witnessing-abuse-and-the-futility-of-complaining/#comments Sat, 04 Jul 2020 21:07:43 +0000 http://innermagic.co.uk/?p=73 We’ve been talking a lot about gymnastics the past few days and I asked one of my daughters what her worst gym […]

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We’ve been talking a lot about gymnastics the past few days and I asked one of my daughters what her worst gym memory was, wondering which of the awful things that I knew she’d endured she might choose. She surprised me though, and immediately picked something that happened not to her, but to her teammate. I say I was surprised but really, I shouldn’t have been. As we have listened to gymnasts and ex-gymnasts speak out recently, it is noticeable that they speak as often of what they saw happen to others as they do of their own suffering. This is a known phenomenon. In fact, in the safeguarding training that I have undertaken, we were taught that to allow a child to witness abuse is itself, abuse. This is because witnessing abuse is often just as traumatising as suffering the abuse directly, in some cases even more so.  

This is my daughter’s story. The name of the gymnast involved has been changed.

“We were training in the run up to a competition and so taking turns to watch each other. It was Sarah’s turn on beam and we all watched her perform her routine. She did a split change ring leap where you do a leap in splits, change legs in mid-air, then you bend your back leg up and arch your head back to meet it so that your foot and head touch. It is a very tricky move because you have to take your eyes off the beam and it is very difficult to spot the landing.

As Sarah came down to land, both her feet missed and slid down one side of the beam. Her body followed and landed heavily on the beam with the side of her ribs hitting the hardest. We later learned that she broke three of her ribs in that fall. We all knew it was bad, Sarah started to cry and she never cried, but the coaches didn’t move. Sarah knew, and we knew, that she had to continue or the coaches would be angry, but you could tell that she was scared and in a lot of pain. It was horrible not being able to comfort her, it was horrible watching her finish her routine in fear and pain and it was horrible knowing how we were all expected to do the same if we were hurt.”

A truly upsetting experience. However, as awful as this incident was, I know that the full story was even worse than my daughter’s recollection. Firstly, because I know that the real reason that Sarah fell that day was not the difficult move but because she was unwell and chronically overtired from so much training at the time of the accident. She shouldn’t have been training at all that day, but the pressure to train no matter what was so great she was afraid to not go to gym. The second reason is worse. Sarah was badly hurt, if doing her best to hide it, and even though her mother knew that it would annoy her coaches, she took Sarah to see a respected physiotherapist. When they returned to gym for the next session after the appointment, Sarah’s mum very nervously reported to the coaches that Sarah’s ribs were broken and that the physiotherapist had said she needed to rest. Sarah’s mum said she’d explained to the physiotherapist that this would be very difficult as they were under a lot of pressure to train for an upcoming competition and the physiotherapist finally, if reluctantly, agreed that Sarah could do very light, limited training. Sarah’s mum explained this to the coaches and detailed what the physiotherapist had said Sarah could, and could not do. It was a very awkward conversation. The coaches were, as usual in such circumstances, very annoyed and dismissed the physiotherapist’s restrictions as ridiculous and ignorant. Sarah’s mum became flustered at this point and said that perhaps she’d misunderstood the physiotherapist’s instructions and agreed that the head coach could contact the physiotherapist directly for confirmation.

As we all turned up for the next training, Sarah’s mum brought her in expecting a light session. However, a very buoyant coach announced that she had called and spoken to the physiotherapist who had, she said, cleared Sarah to return to full training! We were all very surprised, not least Sarah’s mum. But, she assumed that she must have misunderstood what the physiotherapist had said to her and so left an equally astonished Sarah to do a full-on, four hour training session. There was a competition imminent and a lot of work to do.

Now you may have guessed that something else is coming here, however we suspected nothing. Sarah continued to prepare for competition and competed although still in pain from her injury. Not long after however, Sarah’s mum confided in me. Concerned that Sarah was still experiencing some pain she had called to talk to the physiotherapist again for further advice. It was then that she learned that the physiotherapist, on speaking to the coach, had strongly advised against training and that the coach had outright lied. Sarah’s mum was distraught and conflicted. She knew that she should remove her daughter, but Sarah was desperate to continue in gymnastics and to stay with her friends. We discussed the various options, but she was frightened about the potential consequences of them all.

Conditions in the club worsened, and ultimately, I reported the incident, among others, to British Gymnastics. I provided the name of the athlete involved, the club, and the full contact details for her parents. In fact, as well as complaints regarding my own children, I detailed the abuse of several other children and provided their contact information too. I did so with the permission of all the parents. They all were desperate for something to happen and for children to be saved from further abuse but even those who had moved away were too frightened of the consequences to contact BG themselves. They told me, and I told BG, that they absolutely wanted to talk (in fact not doing so was tortuous) but they just wanted to be able to say to people who might accuse them of being troublemakers that they hadn’t initiated the conversation.

The result? They were never contacted. When I later asked BG why, I was told by the head of their Ethics & Welfare team that this would be considered “digging for dirt” (incidentally, other parents have reported this exact phrase said to them regarding separate complaints about other gyms). And in case you’re wondering, the coaches involved were neither suspended nor sanctioned.

As a final note. If you are struggling to know what to call what I and my daughter have described here, it is ‘physical abuse’. Even just the part about pressuring children, even if indirectly, to train when not fit to do so is considered physical abuse. In fact, the World Health Organisation takes this one step further and regards such practice as physical ‘violence’. It results in both immediate, potentially serious, injury but often also life-long chronic pain and physical impairment. As a relatively minor example, my other daughter, cannot straighten many of her fingers due to multiple hidden-by-her and thus not treated fractures. They are often painful, and we are told she will likely suffer early arthritis in them.

Such abuse has no place in sport.

Further note, these events, and the subsequent complaint, took place many years into the ongoing tenure of Jane Allen as CEO of British Gymnastics

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British Gymnastics: Time for REAL Change https://gympal.org.uk/2020/07/01/british-gymnastics-time-for-change/ https://gympal.org.uk/2020/07/01/british-gymnastics-time-for-change/#comments Wed, 01 Jul 2020 11:30:22 +0000 http://innermagic.co.uk/?p=6 2020 is a year that will mark us all for obvious reasons. But for some it will also be the year that […]

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2020 is a year that will mark us all for obvious reasons. But for some it will also be the year that Athlete A was released and a surge of outrage rose through the gymnastics world, not least in the UK.

In a response to the wave of disquiet and disgust, Jane Allen, CEO of British Gymnastics has stated, “Whilst we acknowledge there have been inadequate practices along the way, we have worked tirelessly to try and eradicate them.”

I must admit that I just laughed when I read this, but, to be fair, let’s consider the recent evidence:

2017 was also a dramatic year in gymnastics circles. Nassar was on trial, senior American gymnasts were speaking out on abuse, and even British gymnasts, such as the enormously respected Dan Keatings, began to find their voice. The Guardian newspaper published several shocking articles detailing emotional and physical abuse in British gyms and the serial failure of British Gymnastics to deal with it. A culture of fear, of bullying and manipulation, was beginning to be laid bare.

All this came on top of abuse scandals in other sports, football, tennis, cycling, swimming and the Select Committee for Culture Media and Sport launched an investigation. As part of proceedings the committee invited the then Under-Secretary of State for Sport, Tracey Crouch, to report to them.

This meeting was televised (you can watch the full proceedings here). After some discussion of the situation in other sports Damian Collins (Chair) asked about British Gymnastics:  

Dan Keatings had only been retired for a few months at that point. Crouch had somehow been convinced that Jane Allen was ‘new in post’, the implication being that Dan Keatings experience happened under a different ‘watch’ and that Allen, as a ‘new broom’ would sweep BG’s house clean of abuse. The inconvenient truth is however, that at the time of this statement, Jane Allen had been CEO of British Gymnastics for 7 and a half YEARS, a period that included all of Keatings’ elite career (and certainly the period he describes as the worst), and all of the accusations laid out in the Guardian’s series of articles.

Senior coaches who spoke to the Guardian had also made their thoughts on the matter of Jane Allen very clear. They called for Allen’s resignation, claiming her “appalling leadership” has created a “culture of fear” where people are afraid to speak up about athlete welfare failings for fear of reprisals.

I felt dreadful for Keatings. I understood what it had taken to blow the whistle, and what I’m sure had been his  greatest fear had come true. His complaints were summarily dismissed and nothing was going to happen. Worse, as I am sure Keatings also realised, this would further discourage others from coming forward.

But what about since then? Fast forward to the latest British Gymnastics WAG Performance Pathway Symposium that took place in late February this year, not long before Corona virus brought everything to a halt. The PP symposiums are headline events described by BG as “practical and theory sessions designed to provide coaching insight to deliverers from across the community”. So, who did BG invite to set the tone for the new decade? Ex National Coach for Gymnastics Australia, Peggy Liddick.

For those of you who don’t know, Liddick stepped aside from her 20-year-long stint as National Coach for Gymnastics Australia at the end of 2016 having previously coached, assisting Steve Nunno, American superstar Shannon Miller. The 1990s were a ‘heady’ time in American gymnastics. The now notorious Karolyi’s were in their ascendency, as was an increasingly brutal culture of abuse. Joan Ryan’s 1995 expose Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters paints a chilling picture including explicit criticism of coaches Bela Karolyi and Steve Nunno. An image corroborated by accounts in Claudia Miller’s 1999 book Shannon Miller: My Child, My Hero.

Now, far be it from me to try to tell you what sort of a coach Liddick might be and the reputation she might have, so I thought I would leave it to two highly respected international gymnastics commentators, Spencer Barnes and Jessica O’Beirne of the podcast GymCastic. In this podcast from June 2018 (#310), Spencer and Jessica are discussing who might be selected as the new USA National Team Coordinator. Jessica has heard on the grapevine that Liddick is being considered. This is their reaction:

Spencer Barnes: You don’t want anyone who is even vaguely associated with the old school, Peggy Liddick is very old school….it is the way things used to be done [i.e. culture of abuse], and the most important thing is that you bring in someone who is not tainted by the mistakes of the past.

Jessica is particularly forthcoming…

Jessica O’Beirne “I would say that if you even interviewed Peggy you should be fired. That’s how strongly I feel about Peggy (being considered ), you have no clue what you’re doing, and you have never talked to a gymnast who was coached by her in the last five or ten years. That’s just the truth…..bring back Marta (Karolyi) over Peggy Liddick! That’s how strongly I feel about Peggy Liddick and her recent coaching style.”

At the very least then, having Peggy Liddick to speak was a, how do I put this, controversial choice for an organization seeking to move forward, but it is perhaps easier to understand when you discover that Jane Allen was CEO of Australia Gymnastics from 1997 to 2010 and that she and Peggy Liddick were therefore close colleagues for 13 years.

So…not the best look perhaps, but what did Liddick actually have to say to our coaches? Needless to say I wasn’t there (although I do welcome anyone who was or BG itself to offer a video or transcript of the event). However, concerned coaches were and revealed some of what they heard. I will focus on the part of Liddick’s presentation entitled “Adversity”. Adversity, in all shapes and forms is part of life and is something that all athletes must face and overcome, and you can imagine how vital the input of a psychology-informed, positive coach might be, so this seemed like a great topic for BG coaches.  However, it was here that Liddick regaled her audience with details of how she and fellow coach Nunno overcame ‘adversity’ in the form of ‘managing’ a number of injuries sustained by their athlete, Shannon Miller. For example, in an accident on bars, then 15 year old Miller dislocated her elbow and fractured a small segment of bone that is the attachment point for the ligaments that stabilise the elbow during stress. A potentially devastating injury with the 1992 Olympic trials only weeks away. Various treatment options were offered by the orthopedic consultant. Miller’s coaches’ preference was for a particular type of surgery involving a small metal screw. Under considerable pressure (according to Liddick) Miller’s father finally acquiesced to the coaches and surgeons, however, said Liddick, Shannon’s mother still not convinced (something Liddick attributed to her religious beliefs) decided to take a short break to think and get some coffee. Now we come to Liddick’s proud teaching moment, they grabbed that chance to rush Shannon into surgery before her mother could come back to possibly stop them. It was made clear that this was in keeping with their philosophy of coaching. Another incident was also detailed where a scaphoid fracture was treated as a mere inconvenience, it was strapped (and never properly treated) and the competition went on. At no point, I am informed, did Liddick qualify her statements, the takeaway was to be that you, as the coach, need to do whatever you think you need to do to get your athlete (almost invariably a child) competing when you want them to.

Seriously. How can this example be touted at a premier BG coaching event as a standard for overcoming ‘adversity’? It belongs in a talk on “Horrors of The Past We Must Never Repeat”.  All the worse because this EXACT culture is alive and well in British Gymnastics gyms and it is a culture that comes down from the TOP. By the way, this attitude was not at all shocking to me, nor will it be to many of you. I have many stories I could tell you (and HAVE told to BG) of such practice. It is commonplace in many gyms to have children training and competing on injuries, including fractures, either because they are directly forced by their coach or because the child is too frightened to say they are in pain.

Finally, back to Jane Allen’s response. Wishy-washy statements about “inadequate practices” simply won’t cut it. British Gymnastics, and its leadership, has for years knowingly sustained a culture that they believe is vital to their success, but that results in untold, often life-long, physical and emotional damage to children and young adults. British Gymnastics needs to be very clear about exactly which practices and which cases they now feel they dealt with inadequately. They need to openly and cleanly part ways with the “Culture of Fear” which they have repeatedly denied exists, not least because in doing so, they are in effect, gaslighting thousands of former and current gymnasts who have suffered, and continue to suffer.

In the years I have spent trying to ensure that no more children suffer as mine did, I feel I have learned to understand British Gymnastics and its leadership. Its decisions, its statements, its actions only make sense when you understand that it will do anything to sustain itself as an organization. It has no real interest in the gymnasts it purports to represent (at any level) other than them being the means to sustain itself. Please, please do what you can to seize this moment, it really is time for change.

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