As anyone who reads this space knows, I generally stay in the political realm. I have been known to branch off occasionally into football, but that's usually still connected in some way to politics. Today I want to take a minute to focus on another sport that is as closely followed by people in my house as football.... gymnastics.
There is no way to describe the disappointment we felt when they postponed the Tokyo Olympics to 2021. The Summer Olympics have been my favorite for most of my adult life. I love volleyball and beach volleyball, swimming, diving, equestrian competition, and most of all, gymnastics. Having followed gymnastics since Mary Lou won her gold medal in 1984, I am supremely aware of how hard the sport is, and how little the general public understands what it takes to be an Olympic Gymnast. Thousands upon thousands of little girls join the sport with a dream, and at the end of the day, five are chosen. That's it, five. Imagine telling a class of college football draftees that only five of them would be chosen. More, tell those high school and college players there is no life outside their sport. They have to train at their sport for eight hours a day, six days a week, and even then, the odds of reaching their dream are closer to 0% then 100%. It's hard, it's physically and mentally punishing. So I know if I was disappointed, the athletes themselves must be devastated.
I could go into the ridiculousness of the FIG, when they decided to shrink the teams from five to four and institute their crazy World Cup system that no one really understood. Or how many American news sites put a bullseye on Jade Carey, who qualified through the World Cup and then had the audacity to get better and then start competing in the runup to trials. (In fairness, the World Cup system is jacked, and if you don't follow the sport all the time you would have no idea how it worked. I doubt those only Olympic year gymnastics reporters have any clue, and frankly, it's really not their fault.)
Instead, I want to talk about USA Gymnastics. Unless your head is buried under a rock, you know that the USAG suffered a real hit to it's reputation, credibility, and pocket when it was revealed that the long-time team doctor, Larry Nassar, was arrested for molesting hundreds of young gymnasts. It's horrifying that this went on, and what's more horrifying is that it took Maggie Nichols to finally report it in June of 2015. It doesn't say anything good about the organization or it's hundreds of member coaches that this was going on for decades before one girl had the guts to talk about it. It puts a huge spotlight on the Karolyi's and USAG's decision to put them in charge. Heck we all thought the worst part of gymnastics was the berating and driving young girls to eating disorders. This is worse. USAG failed to report sexual abuse of a minor in compliance with the law. Steve Penny, the then president, Marta Karolyi, the then national team coordinator, and Maggie's coach. They all broke the law. According to USAG, and Michigan State University, Maggie Nichols was known as "Athlete A". The Indy Star was, of course, chasing this down at the same time that Maggie was fighting her own battle. Thank God they did. Without their tireless investigation and refusal to give up, I'm not sure Maggie's case would have gone anywhere.
While USAG sat on the allegations for 5 months, they did report it to the FBI in 2015. What happened next is such a travesty of justice, and one that has barely been mentioned. The FBI sat on the information, for months. Many, many months. USAG actually had to contact the FBI 8 months after they reported it, because nothing was being done. Eight months. In which time it is alleged that somewhere between 40 and 70 girls and women were the victims of Larry Nassar's abuse. The FBI slow walked an investigation. There are some allegations that Steve Penny was offering jobs with the USOC to the agents. So what? You are a law enforcement officer. One of them was the Special Agent in Charge. This was your job, and I don't care if he offered you Emperor of the World, these women and girls deserved better from the nation's top law enforcement agency. I'll insert a little politics... maybe they were just too busy spying on then candidate Donald Trump to actually do their job.
USAG, USOC, and the University of Michigan don't deserve any credit. The FBI failing to do their job does not exonerate those organizations for their own failures. The most outspoken girls, I have discovered, are the ones who attained their dreams. They are on the news and have profiles done about them, but until Netflix made Athlete A, no one knew how instrumental Maggie Nichols was, or what she sacrificed. You see, Maggie should have been a 2016 Olympian. She deserved to go. We were told that Marta said she had to be able to do that harder vault to have any chance of making the team, a vault that 3 other girls chosen for that team could not and did not do. I believe Maggie was left off the team because she threatened the reputation of the very person making the decision. Maggie was sexually assaulted at the Karolyi's national team camp. They knew, and they waited 5 months to report it. They had files of girls abused by coaches that they never reported. And so, she was shunted to the back of the pack, and her dream was done. Maggie is the hero. Not Aly Raisman, not Jaime Danszcher, McKayla Maroney, Gabby Douglas, or even Simone Biles. Maggie. The girl who gave up her dream so that in the future, many other girls will hopefully be saved a devastating, life-altering, horrific act. Thank you, Maggie. She did go on to have an amazingly successful collegiate career, becoming the NCAA All Around Champion in both 2018 and 2019.
Now USAG's high performance coordinator is Tom Forster. Tom is a different breed. Still tough and demanding, but different. He wants the best for those girls, but he also knows so many of them will never be an Olympic Champion. There were some interesting rumblings when fan favorites (like Gabby Douglas had once been) were left off the National Team and not invited to Olympic Trials. Tom really liked some of those girls, but in the end, only the best can go, and he chose the best. So you are pissed that your favorite didn't get to go. I was pissed in 2016 when they left Maggie off the team, and she wasn't my favorite. (I'm a GOAT fan all the way.) I still rooted for our girls to win. You should too. And you should be utterly thankful that the guy in charge isn't a Karolyi.
