Posted on 05/03/2021 1:18:40 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Hall of Fame gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi and his wife, Martha, face fresh allegations of physical and psychological abuse of young female athletes dating to the 1960s in a newly published book, according to the Daily Mail.
Romanian author Stejarel Olaru wrote in “Nadia si Securitatea” that Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci — the first gymnast to score a perfect 10 at the Olympics, in 1976 — is among the victims who were starved to the point of developing eating disorders, slapped, and denied medical treatment, according to the report.
Comaneci was Bela Karolyi’s first prodigy and his gateway to defecting to America in 1981.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Some of those girl gymnasts are painfully thin. I hate to think they are starved to keep them small and limber to do their gymnastic routines. Perhaps that is going on.
Mary Lou Retton changed all of that, didn’t she?
Didn’t she end up as a “honey trap” for the KGB?
I was a gymnast around that time- keeping a young girl’s weight down delayed puberty. Going through puberty caused hips to widen and changed the center of gravity which affected performance.
No.
Raped? Possibly/probably?
Tortured- yes.
https://www.tampabay.com/archive/1990/02/26/ceausescu-son-reportedly-beat-comaneci/
Just horrific.
Sad. I remember being a little girl wowed by the Magnificent 7 at the Atlanta Olympics. And wasn’t it Karolyi who carried Kerri Strug after she injured her ankle?
Female gymnasts stay as thin as possible for them to be healthy enough to compete so they can delay going through puberty. My granddaughter was tapped for training at an elite gym and my daughter and my son-in-law were considering it until they were told that she would need to lose at least 10 lbs. This would have put her weighing 85 lbs at 5’2”. At that point, they pulled her from competition level gymnastics.
My granddaughter was really upset for a while. It took several months for her to except the fact that what the coaches were asking was not healthy. Eating disorders have been a dirty little secret in the gymnastics world for a long time. I think the only activities worse for eating orders than gymnastics would be beauty pageants and modeling.
Yes, that was the guy who had Strug go do a vault at the risk of destroying her leg in order to win the judges’ sympathy.
Athletics, at a high level, is inevitably demanding. Someone, somewhere, is going to ridiculous lengths to make sure they win. So, if you hope to win, then you also have to go to ridiculous lengths.
Which is probably why shoving 14-year-olds into international competition is a weird idea.
If some young adult (22?) really, really wants a pro football career then maybe they’ll go do some crazy stuff to make it happen. But that’s on them. Children have a much harder time saying No. And many parents aren’t actually focused on the kid.
Not surprised.
“The only activities worse for eating orders than gymnastics would be beauty pageants and modeling.”
I agree. Models in NYC eat cotton for lunch and then celery and a sleeping pill for dinner.
Bicycle professionals also diet and lose weight, since every pound slows them down.
Ethics teaches us to be balanced and becoming deficient or excessive is wrong and leads to unhappiness. Many pro cyclists are unhappy and get addicted to PED’s. Many NYC models live eimpty lives without husbands or kids.
I was prefer a balanced meal over a photo in a magazine or a trophy in a race.
Wow, just looked at the recent crop of gymnast girls — they’re all built on truck chassis. Awful little trogs.
I would think that cycling was inherently slimming. Some people might have to fight their genetics more than others.
I oppose minors being in international competitions.
Bad for their bodies and their minds imo.
Family member competed at a different sport several levels below this. Even there it was sickening to see what was endured. Kind of like looking inside a cult. Immediate family member saw nothing but unicorns and goodness in the process. Offered to pay for the individuals education knowing it would lead to a reduce commitment and then defection from the cultish activity.
I never got the privilege to do so.
No. She married US gymnast Bart Conners and became a US citizen.
With the state of our education system, I don’t think a lot of parents realize how damaging the dieting and exercising demands that are made at the elite level of gymnastics are, both physically and psychologically. You have the team doctors and sports doctors and trainers saying everything is fine. If you don’t have the education to know that the demands are unhealthy, you may not realize you SHOULD be saying no.
25 years and still in love. They are both probably more huggable than a baby sea otter, too.
I hope someone asked them if this book was a good idea or not, and they both read it and said yes. Digging up 35 year old trash to sell books is disgusting.
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