We have grown accustomed to watching young women and little girls, in uniforms that expose their bottoms similar to ill-fitting undergarments, flip through the air at international gymnastics competitions. They make it look effortless, so we forget the cost. That is, until someone with the clout of Simone Biles reminds us.
I studied ballet from the age of three. I fell in love with gymnastics because it felt as though it took ballet to the next level of beauty and self-expression. The attitude in the 1970s and 1980s, concerning both physical and psychological pain, was: “suck it up.” Ripped palms, bruises, and broken fingers are just part of the deal, but when I knew an injured leg was serious, my coach told me to “walk it off.” I was in a cast from my foot to my thigh for three months. At my step-father’s funeral visitation in 1979, I promised my coach I would be at practice Monday. It is what gymnastics looked like for hundreds of thousands of young women for decades.
I was shaken when a Soviet gymnast, Yelena Mukhina, was left paralyzed just before the 1980 Olympic Games. When I did an internet search to help me remember her name, I learned of others. Jacoby Miles was paralyzed at age 15 and Julissa Gomez was rendered quadriplegic after a vaulting accident in 1988. She died at age 18 of complications.
Mukhina was the 1978 world all-around champion. She suffered a broken leg and was pushed by her coaches to be ready for the Olympics. Despite her protests that she didn’t feel ready to compete, her cast was removed early. Mukhina fell while doing an extremely difficult tumbling skill and spent the rest of her life as a paraplegic. She paid a horrible price for a sport that has come to value winning and television rating over the well-being of its athletes.
In the 1950s and 1960s, when gymnastics was a young sport, the dance aspect of it was stressed far more. Of course, we did our routines on wrestling mats, not spring floors, and the balance beams were made of unpadded wood, which left not only bruises, but cuts when you fell against an edge. Rural schools, similar to mine, still had such equipment until the early 1980s.
I stopped competing in college after a fall from the bars, which landed me flat on my back on a wooden gym floor, because a mat had not been properly set up. At age 22 I taught at a gymnastics school in Wilmington, Delaware. I remember seeing a girl fly off the bars into a cement wall. That was when I began telling anyone who would listen, that gymnastics should be about beauty and expression, not teaching small children to do devastatingly difficult and dangerous tricks similar to trained monkeys.
I still have hope for the sport in spite of its history of eating disorders, molestation, and exploitation. I applaud Simone Biles’ stand for mental health and listening to the voices of gymnasts. I applaud the German team for refusing to wear tiny leotards that don’t cover a woman’s derriere. I applaud the mothers who attend events and listen to their daughters’ concerns about everything from safety to inappropriate touching.
It will take all of us, the parents, the competitors, the coaches, and the fans, to change the culture of this sport. Gymnastics can be a truly beautiful endeavor that does not silence, nor exploit the women who sacrifice so much for it.