In the light of “Athlete A” and “In the Heart of Gold” documentaries, as well as the statements of all the brave gymnasts all around the world, I decided I could no longer be silent about my own little gymnastics trauma.
I seemed to be born to be a gymnast. I was tiny but muscular. I was already 7 when I started gymnastics. I loved it right away. I loved to jump, flip and fly.
I was in a local club. I started doing competitions. I made my way up and soon I did about all the tricks my coach was able to teach me. When I was 10 I easily won all the competitions I entered. A coach from another club also training in our hall took me on a training camp. The guy terrified me. He would hit his gymnasts with leather flip flops. I couldn’t eat. My weight dropped down from about 20 to 17 kg in only 10 days. I remember it clearly because we had to stand on his scale every single day. I couldn’t sleep and was crying the entire day. I was lucky my aunt got married in the middle of the camp, so I was able to go home for a day or 2. In the second week my parents visited me. They did not take me home but one of my own coaches did the next day. My coach was not trained to be a gymnastics coach. He was getting his training on the job. Unfortunately, I was the job. I learned new tricks by just doing them, without any physical preparation. We would start it and see where it ended.
I was learning giants. I was so small I fitted under the low bar so I was doing it there. My coach was spotting me. I slipped off the bars and he mis grabbed. I flew away and ended up landing on my head and neck behind the safety mat. I was unconscious. They took my twin sister out of the hall. The one coach shook me to wake me up while the other one came walking by and asked why I didn’t do a dismount. They put me on my feet and took me to the dressing room to play a piece on my violin to check if my brain was still working. My father later took me to the hospital. My skull and shoulder were only bruised luckily. However, they did not do a complete check up in the hospital. I kept training, terrified in the meantime to slip of the bar again. My hands were so small it was very difficult to hold on to it. Being almost 40 my hands still have the size of a regular 7-8 years old.
At that time you had to train with soviet coaches to become a better gymnast. Local coaches brought over soviet coaches now and then. Since I was promising other clubs invited me to train together with their soviet coach. I was always afraid. I did not understand what those coaches wanted from me. They would take you by the arm and gesture, but I did not get it. One of them threw me from the high bar. I still don’t know why but I discovered he would just ignore me if I did bad handstands. That’s what I did. On my turn I would throw a bad handstand so he would send me away.
We did not have a specialized gym hall so we had to move all the material around before and after each session. It was normal for us to carry around balance beams and safety mats. When I was 13 I lifted a giant safety mat. I shouldn’t have tried it on my own probably, but I did. I felt something moving in my back and had some pain.
My parents took me to a physiotherapist. He thought I had a stress fracture in my back and sent me to a doctor. The doctor missed the fracture. He misdiagnosed me and prescribed me a few months of rest. Just rest. Nothing else. I remember going to a physiotherapist, he just applied some warm compresses but that was about it. I never did a single exercise to strengthen my back. I returned to the gym. I had grown. I was still small, about 130 cm for 25 kg but I was heavier than I was before. It was hard to return, i just tried doing everything again from day 1. I heard people talking behind my back I looked heavy and was lost for gymnastics.
I continued training. I loved the strict structure of my days when I was training. School, homework, gym, eat, sleep and repeat. In fact, I needed it. I couldn’t imagine what to do without the gymnastics part in my schedule. I continued training but my back was still acting weird. It was making sounds when I did conditioning. During a stretch where we had to sit with our nose between our knees with a coach sitting on top of us, I could feel something moving just too far. My body seemed to be stuck in that position. During the stretch I heard the visiting Soviet coach telling my coach he did not want to work with me because I was too fat and old. Sometimes I couldn’t stand upright after a vault. My coach then did a traction on my legs to make them move again. I don’t remember telling much about it to my parents. I wanted to do gymnastics. One day it happened during the warmup of a competition. I did a front somersault on beam, landed it nicely but simply could not straighten out. My parents were watching so I couldn’t deny.
I hated competitions. Especially after my back gave up. I could clearly see I was staying behind. My body just wasn’t able to take it anymore. In the club I could feel the jealousy of some parents and gymnasts. At first I was a real standout but with my injury the others were able to catch up. I could hear them talk about me when they were watching their children train. My parents rarely came to the hall.
Another year passed by. Luckily for my back, I sprained my ankle. A new doctor in town, put me in a cast because he did not want me to go to the gym. I got a complete checkup because my back was giving me trouble even when I wasn’t doing gymnastics. That’s when they found the fracture in my spine. By that time the fracture was unstable and needed surgery. I had a spinal fusion when I was 16. I’m almost 40 now. I’m in pain every single day.