Gymnastics: Physical Abuse, Witnessing Abuse and the Futility of Complaining

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