I’m going to go against the flow a bit and say that gymnastics does not necessarily have a higher potential for abuse. Gymnastics does tend to be more consolidated at higher levels, by which I mean that there are fewer coaches and doctors at higher level gymnastics and, therefore, each has more opportunity to do widespread damage - like Nasser. Other youth sports are more distributed, even at higher levels. Youth baseball, for instance, has it’s fair share of pedophile coaches and parents (and probably doctors) but there is a far larger pool of them and their circle of influence is smaller. To put it in perspective, in my 15 years coaching youth baseball (up to high school level) I personally know exactly zero players who have made an MLB roster. I know of at least 2 coaches and one parent who were convicted of molestation directly related to kids on their/their kid’s team, just in my home association.
I think the problem started in the 70’s when the girl from Romania won those perfect 10’s. Her coach defected to the west and brought with him eastern European standards and harsh coaching to the US. His new wife and he started that remote Texas training facility and set the tone. True, shortly after that US womens teams started really winning but it came at a cost.
That’s true for pretty much any sport. You don’t make the Olympic team or the pros if you start at 18, unless you play a very specific role like a pusher in bobsled. That requires speed and strength and that’s why you see track and NFL players in those roles. A driver has been driving since their early teens.
If you’re talking gymnastics, if you’re in college you’re well past your prime. The few older competitors started as six year olds like everyone else.
The reason you see this in sports is not because of the sport but the absolute authority of the coach and the access to the kids away from their parents for extended periods of time. I would never let my kid travel if I had even the slightest inkling about the coach.
I t happens anywhere there is unfettered access to kids and a strong authority figure (e.g. the Church). The people inclined to do this stuff know where to go for access.
I wonder if the the fact that gymnastics is judged adds to the potential. Parents may feel (quite possibly for good reason) that, even if the performance is exactly the same, it’s an advantage for a competitor to enter a competition with a coach that’s well-known and popular with the elite judging clique. And at the same time, they may feel that leaving or, God forbid, accusing, such a coach would lead to severe backlash from the coach’s friends who judge competitions. So top coaches in gymnastics have even more power than in more objectively-won sports.
That’s in addition to the age issues, of course. Frankly, I think competitive ‘womens’ gymnastics need to be burned down and started over using events that don’t require pre-pubescence to succeed.
Slightly different because of the US system, sure, but are the club systems elsewhere much better? What are your Olympic chances if you don’t get into the top-level club teams in your early teens?
I’m surprised swimming / diving wasn’t mentioned earlier and in the same breath with gymnastics. Like gymnastics, the girls start out very young and their attire leaves very little to the imagination. Often the coaches are older men who have their hands all over the girls while showing them how to perform various moves. Granted, bad things don’t happen very often percetage-wise, but the whole process of having older males training these young girls to perform is just ripe for abuse.
When my daughters were at the local college pool learning to swim, there was a coach at the other end of the pool training very young girls to perform various swimming strokes. The way that his hands were all over them just turned my stomach.
This will vary by country, but in Spain the biggest club-based sports are footie and basket; one considers the Olympics a footnote; for the other one it’s more important but you only hear a basketball player talk about them when they’re taking place. You ask a young player what would they like to do eventually and they’re more likely to mention an Euro-level competition or a World Cup than the Olympics. You can go pro without having been through the school of a big club; most pros come from the schools of clubs nobody abroad has ever heard of, some from local clubs where players have weekday jobs.
Other club-based sports are small enough that “the top-level club teams” may be one this year and another one two years later; it’s more likely to depend on having one or two exceptional people than on the club having more money. When my cousin was in waterpolo, there were several clubs in Barcelona, one in Tarragona (1h away) and one in Madrid: people from the rest of the country only heard of waterpolo in the sports segment of the news. And with rare exceptions (gymnastics and synchronized swimming), training is programmed around school hours.
But in the UK at least football (soccer) has had its own abuse scandal. Over the last year or so there have been a series of revelations regarding the scale of abuse of boys by coaches and other staff in a wide range of professional clubs. See here. It’s the same problem, young lads dream of being top flight football stars and are quite likely to have parents cheering them on as they get signed up by a team’s youth set up in their very early teens. Yes, they can come up through one of the smaller clubs but a smaller club probably means the abuser is even less constrained with less people to supervising his actions.
I’ve seen that to but at least that was out in the open and one can somewhat justify some touching where a coach with a small amount of time has to get a swimmer or diver to get their body into a certain position. So he might touch their feet, butt, chest, head, back, or whatever as they see the swimmer as not really a person but just a figure needing to get into a particular position. Dance and ballet teachers often do the same. I dont know alot about swimming/diving but I know even a small adjustment of where your head is could be a big difference in how fast you swim. Also pushing up a swimmers butt while at the same time pushing down their head is different than rubbing their butt.
Now the minute pool time is done and the swimmer becomes a person again the touching should totally stop.
My niece, who’s about to turn 13, has been in gymnastics since she was about 7. She’s very good (and, of course, she’s also at practice for several hours every single day, plus time spent traveling for meets), and my in-laws have made a lot of financial sacrifices to facilitate her advancement in the sport.
She’s good enough at the sport that, at most of her meets, she medals in one or more of her exercises, but I suspect that she’s not quite good enough to have even an outside shot at the Olympic trials in 2020 (though I think that she, and my in-laws, at least recognize that fact). What they’re shooting for is for her to be successful enough to land a scholarship to compete at the collegiate level. Yes, as a collegiate gymnast, she’d be “past her prime,” but hey, if it pays for college, it may well be worth it.
I used to teach swim lessons to kids, long ago, for the Y. Although I occasionally grabbed one to prevent them drowning, or knocking their chin on the pool ledge, or to intercept a wild kick or whatever, I certainly would never have manhandled them to position their body. Even in the 80s that would have way over the line.
Furthermore, a coach shouldn’t be in the water like a swim instructor; they’re on the side, where they can get a better view of the stroke. Everything should be verbal direction (with hand waving and such). Nowadays, most coaches will video their swimmers, and then point out where corrections need to be made using the playback. Even my coworker’s 8yo daughter (making B times) has a coach who does that. If you see someone pushing up a swimmer’s butt while pushing down their head, that’s something that attention should be called to.