While may brave athletes are speaking up about their experiences within elite gymnastics, I think it is my time as well. My time to reveal the inappropriate behaviour that I tolerated for 4 years since I kept being told that’s what was needed to be done in order to reach my long term goal which as to go to the olympics. When I began training in such a toxic environment I was 9 years old. Gymnastics was my first love and I couldn’t get enough of it. The feeling of flying though the air and achieving new skills was just incredible. The only problem was the ruthless new coach that our club was given. He would arrive to training at 7am and be in a horrible mood which created fear in the young girls. I was yelled and screamed at for 30 hours a week, 7 hours a day, 6 days a week. I was in an environment were if you showed any emotion that wasn’t neutral you would be abused and told “get out of my sight”. The abuse wasn’t just emotional but it was physical. Girls were being hit with sticks, I was dropped to the ground from a high bar which lead to me breaking my elbow. I ripped medial epicondyle and crushed the lateral epicondyle and ripped all of the ligaments of my arm from both sides of my elbow. Since I didn’t cry he decided not to call the ambulance. He just sat me down, and it was up to another one of the male coaches who told him that he needed to call the ambulance immediately since I had two hematoma either side of my elbow. On one occasion a girl was concussed and was unaware of where she was, but this coach told her to go to wooden bar and when the female coach stepped in and said that she didn’t think that was a good idea she was sent to strap bar where she was still upside down and rotating around the bar. No ambulance was called. This is the environment that young girls were exposed to and couldn’t leave since there was no other elite gymnastics club in the state. My parents had had enough of this behaviour and decided to take it to the governing body and they respond with “we are lucky to have him as a coach.” My parents were appalled with this response and I was ultimately kicked out of the program for speaking up. I encourage you to speak up too.
A post shared by Emelia ♡ (@emeliadart) on Jul 17, 2020 at 2:38am PDT