Women's Gymnastics: The Big Mac of the Beijing Games
The Olympics and I have what you could call a conflicted relationship. There’s the beauty of the games, the enjoyment of sports that don’t normally make it onto the sports landscape. Then there that ugly pervasive undercurrent that can leave you queasy. It's like eating at McDonalds: so tasty at first, so nauseating upon reflection.
If the Olympics are McDonalds, then women's gymnastics is without question the Big Mac. There is the remarkable, CGI-like athleticism by all the young women involved. Then there is the knowledge that the competitors have had their bodies and health manipulated and warped so they can execute on the springboard.
This past week saw what Sports Illustrated's EM Swift called "the marquee event of these Beijing Games" the women's gymnastics team finals where China and the US went head-to-head. China won, and in a staggering act of hypocrisy, all that US national team coordinator Martha Károlyi and her husband Béla (banned from coaching the team for unspecified reasons) could do was bellow about how the Chinese team violated age violations and cheated their way to the gold. (Béla calls the Chinese gymnasts "half people.") The media has run with this, raising hell with accusations that the Chinese were using several gymnasts under the age of 16. The Chinese coach, Lu Shanzen smartly responded, "If you think our girls are little because of looks, then maybe you should think the Europeans and Americans are strong because of doping."
Let's forget the terrible irony that the media is all too concerned about Chinese gymnasts who aren't 16 but have turned a blind eye to the way Chinese child labor has been used to prepare Beijing for the Olympic games. Béla and Martha Károlyi launching these attacks is like hearing George W. Bush criticize Russia for invading Georgia: they simply have no moral standing whatsoever. The Károlyis' success in gymnastics is unparalleled. They have coached nine Olympic champions, fifteen world champions, sixteen European medalists and six US national champions. Yet to deal with the Károlyis is to deal with the devil. Their reputation for starving young girls on 900 calorie a day diets and verbally abusing them so they can be light enough to stick the landing, is infamous. There have even been reports suggesting that Béla has had young girls practice on broken bones. As 1996 Olympian Dominique Moceanu said last month, "If it was up to the athletes, [the Károlyis would have been banned from the sport] a long time ago." She also once said, "I'm sure Béla saw injuries, but if you were injured, Béla didn't want to see it...You had to deal with it. I was intimidated. He looked down on me. He was 6-feet something, and I was 4-foot nothing."
The Károlyis were the driving force behind the dominance of the "4-foot nothing gymnast", dramatically and irrevocably transforming their sport.
As Joan Ryan wrote in her harrowing book, Little Girls in Pretty Boxes:
In 1956 the top two Olympic female gymnasts were 35 and 29 years old. In 1968 gold medalist Vera Caslavska of Czechoslovakia was 26-years-old, stood 5 feet 3 inches and weighed 121 pounds. Back then, gymnastics was truly a woman's sport....[In 1976] 14-year-old Nadia Comaneci clutched a baby doll after scoring the first perfect 10.0 in Olympic history. She was 5 feet tall and weighed 85 pounds. The decline in age among American gymnasts since Comaneci's victory is startling. In 1976 the six US Olympic gymnasts were, on average, 17 and a half years old, stood 5 feet three and a half inches and weighed 106 pounds. By the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, the average US Olympic gymnast was 16-years-old, stood 4 feet 9 inches and weighed 83 pounds, a year younger, 6 inches shorter and 23 pounds lighter than her counterparts of 16 years before.
Béla Károlyi of course trained Comaneci and later defected, took his act to the states and hasn't looked back, making millions on the brittle backs of young women who bodies are misshapen on account of his ruthless pursuit of gold. Yes, women's gymnastics can make you queasy all right. And the thought of Béla Károlyi, bending his huge frame over to get in the face and scream at young girls, is enough to really make you sick.
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Nastia Liuken is awesome, and i'm thrilled that she won the all-around. i love that you can tell on her face that, as nice as she seems, she totally would've cracked one of shawn "i'm-just-so-thrilled-to-be-here-isn't-it-cute-hehe" johnson's ribs in order to ensure gold. feisty. the media about her has been absolutely hysterical though, in a cold war kinda way. the good immigrant girl living the american dream by leaving evil moscow as a child and never looking back. what a riot to me. the olympics is absolutely filled w/ this crap - any time an athlete competing for the US wasn't born in America they are portrayed as an "example of what america does for the world" and an "exception to their people." good God, someone should interview the Iraqi team about what the US really does for the world... then again, those athletes were probably all hand-chosen by GW....
Bela and women's gymnastics really give me the creeps. Shame on me for not wanting to miss a minute of it.
The sour grapes attacks on the Chinese gymnasts has turned my stomach, but it doesn't stop there. During the Opening Ceremonies, the NBC commentators had the nerve to talk about how some other countries used "questionable" citizenship practices to recruit athletes. When one considers that the U.S. Congress passed a special law to give Tanith Belbin citizenship before the last Winter Games, the accusations of bending the rules just rings hollow. It harkens back to the U.S. pointing fingers at other countries for doping, while it was going on in our track and swimming programs, as well. The hypocrisy of it all infuriates me. As long as governments and the media consider gold medals to equal political, economic, and moral superiority, this will go on. Worry about your own glass house before throwing stones at another.
As for the age limits, I applaud the general idea behind them, but I don't think there's any will to do anything really usefull in this sport. They were meant to try to protect young, predominantly female athletes in the sports of figure skating and gymnastics. However, one only has to watch the video of Kerri Strug landing on one leg to realize that the IOC, the gymnastic federations, the media, the coaches and the parents couldn't care less about protecting these girls. Just get rid of the age limits altogether. The sport needs to really clean house, not worry about window dressing.
Joan Ryan's book is a must read on this subject. If you want to get to the "mystery" behind underage-looking gymnasts look no further than the training of women's gymnastics. Because of the rigorous workouts,low-calorie diet, weight requirements many gymnasts actually postpone menstruation. That is part of the reason why when gymnasts Also, given the pressure to be the best in this sport, eating disorders are rampant.
It is utter racism to call Chinese gymnasts "half-people". These same sort of accusations about under-age gymnasts were thrown at the former Soviet teams back in the 80's when the USSR was our main rival in gymanstics and on the world stage.
I will say, however that I am sick of the pretty pretty princess aspect of this sport. They are doing just as difficult stuff as the men, but have to wear ridiculous glittery leotards and "dance" to silly music in the floor excercise.(unless they actually take dance classes, I would prefer they just tumble). It is the contradiction of a sport which has qualitatively changed because of techonological advances in training. It is asking too much for women to be as graceful as ballerinas when they are pressured to perfect increasingly difficult skills.
Still one of my favorite sports, but intensly brutal.
If you are going to be an elite gymnast then you learn to deal with broken bones and injuries. There is nothing better than the prize of an all-around gold medal at the games. It's the biggest prize in the sport. If you're going to go for that medal then you just deal with it. That medal is better than Jesus and better than getting married or having children. It's the single most amazing accomplishment in a persons life. Besides some of what they learn training at this level will toughen them up. Make them strong. Too bad child abuse is illegal. Might make some of the kids today less annoying and more behaved.
I also think that China needs to be stripped of their gold. Having underage gymnasts is just like cheating. It's far from acceptable. The fact it will go unlooked because god for bid we embarrass the host nation is just plain stupid.
having been a gymnast myself.. this is just the nature of the sport... you put competition in-front of everything. I competed for 6 months on an injured ankle before when getting a regular physical the doctor saw it and forced x-rays.
going into gymnastics especially at the elite level.. you do anything for the love of the sport.
its a sick thing.. but I also know that its not only this sport that this happens. i don't regret my years i put into the sport they have made me a much stronger person today
How exactly do you learn to deal with this?
http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/486810
What has me, is that it seems that there would be a high probability of failure the first time you attempt any dismount. So how exactly does this happen? Also I get the idea that this story isn't unique and that many young gymnast sustain career ending injuries not just ones that you can "walk off".
It's sickening that Gymnastics Canada hasn't even commented on this injury. It's almost as if they are scared of something...
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Dave Zirin is the author of the book: "Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics and Promise of Sports" (Haymarket). You can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by
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