Abused Gymnasts Voices Are Finally Being Heard. Last month, when I was at the 2. National Championships in Anaheim, I overheard two former national team members talking about how things feel different this year. They were referring to how gymnasts seemed less fearful of speaking publicly about what they had endured during their careers than they had been in years. The rest of the weekend would bear that sentiment out. A couple of days later, Aly Raisman, the six time Olympic medalist, would give an interview in which she called out USA Gymnastics for how it handled sex abuse allegations against coaches and former team physician, Larry Nassar. And a couple of days after that, 2. Last month, when I was at the 2017 National Championships in Anaheim, I overheard two former national team members talking about how things feel different this year. Astronomers at the Arecibo Observatory have picked up some strange signals coming from Ross 128, a red dwarf star located 11 lightyears from Earth. Naturally, the. Charlie Pierce on all this ESPN nonsense and newspapering and what not is so fantastic and Im bitter we didnt run it. Go check it out. SI. Olympian John Orozco, now retired, responded to a comment on his Instagram as to why he wasnt smiling in a photo taken while he was being reunited at championships with the 2. Olympic teamOrozco was named to the team but tore his ACL before the Gameswith scathing criticism of USA Gymnastics. He commented Its because USAG as a federation doesnt about athletes or what they subject them to if it means succeed for them, so its hard being around so many disgusting people. I was just there to receive my reward. Divx Ipod Voices Of A Distant Star ' title='Divx Ipod Voices Of A Distant Star ' />USA Gymnastics has spent the year since its record breaking medal haul in Rio defending itself against a barrage of lawsuits stemming from its failures to properly protect athletes from a sexually predatory team doctor and to report allegations of abuse to the authorities. And the athletes, sensing that USA Gymnastics was on the ropes, have been going on the offensive against the national governing body, speaking publicly and candidly about their grievances, sometimes for the first time in their careers. Its not just the sexual abuse. The frank and open discussion has created an opening for gymnasts to speak about other forms of abuse and mistreatment. Back in June, 1. 99. Vanessa Atler revealed how her coach, Valeri Liukin, used to make gymnasts weigh themselves three times a day and would expect the gymnasts to run in trash bags to drop weight. Liukin, who took over as national team coordinator from Martha Karolyi, responded to Atlers comments in an interview, saying Coaching techniques and perspectives have evolved since then, and I have grown as a coach through experience and expanding my knowledge. Today, I firmly believe an athletes focus should be on training smart, with increased education in the areas of balanced nutrition, fitness, healthy lifestyle and communication. This is the basis for our approach in womens gymnastics. The implicit question is How recently did Liukin and his approaches to nutrition and training evolve From what Katelyn Ohashi, the 2. UCLA standout, writes, he was still training gymnasts in the manner that Atler described as recently as six years ago. Atler trained with Liukin from late 1. The week after national championships, Ohashi published a blog post about her experiences with body shaming and dieting as a junior elite, citing coaches, parents, and even fans who posted nasty comments about her body on her Youtube videos and Instagram posts. She wrote It started when I was 1. Divx Ipod Voices Of A Distant Star ' title='Divx Ipod Voices Of A Distant Star ' />Ive been told I looked like I swallowed an elephant or a pig, whichever was more fitting that day. I was compared to a bird that was too fat to lift itself off the ground. The Sun is good. Without our hot, gas ball of a friend, wed all be dead. More accurately, we would have never been born So its a good thing that our Sun has. Watch32 Watch Movies on Watch32. Watch32 is the Biggest Library of free Full Movies. Watch 32 Movies Online. Download the free trial version below to get started. Doubleclick the downloaded file to install the software. If I looked bigger on a given day, I had to run and condition with heavy sweats until it seemed like I was ready to start practice. Ive even been asked to sign a contract that would basically prohibit me from training if I did not lose weight. Ohashi doesnt specify the gym or the coach but if youre familiar with the timeline of her careerOhashi left her previous gym, Great American Gymnastics Express GAGE in Blue Springs, Missouri in 2. Liukin at WOGA, the gym he owns in Plano, Texas. In her post, Ohashi published excerpts from her diary from that period, which chronicle her increasingly troubled relationship with food and eating, her mothers attempts to hide the unhealthy food from her in order to help stay fit, and her late night obsessive conditioning. Ohashis fellow gymnasts rallied around her blog post. InformationWeek. com News, analysis and research for business technology professionals, plus peertopeer knowledge sharing. Engage with our community. Sarah De. Meo, a former national team member and teammate of Ohashi back when she still trained at GAGE, tweeted this in response More than simply supporting Ohashi, De. Meos tweet indicates that the sort of damaging coaching practices that Ohashi described encountering at WOGA were not just limited to that particular gym. Al Fong, head coach and owner at GAGE was featured prominently in Joan Ryans 1. Cult Horror Cartoons Gigantic. Little Girls in Pretty Boxes. One of his former athletes, 1. Christy Henrich, died from anorexia. And another, Julissa Gomez, broke her neck in a vaulting accident at a competition in Japan and died a few years later. Atler, Ohashi, De. Meo, and Raisman are hardly the first gymnasts to speak out about their negative experiences in the sport. Back in 2. 00. 8, 1. Jennifer Sey published her memoir Chalked Up My Life in Elite Gymnastics, which detailed her experiences with harsh, unsafe training practices, injuries, and eating disorders. Four years later, 1. Olympic champion Dominique Moceanu published her memoir, Off Balance, which was especially critical of Martha and Bela Karolyi, her personal coaches, for the emotional abuse they subjected her to when she was a young teen. Moceanus memoir was published while Martha Karolyi was still the national team coordinator and the U. S. women were in the middle of a winning streak and didnt seem to have an impact on how USA Gymnastics managed elite level gymnastics in the United States. And Moceanu, in recent interviews, has spoken about how she became something of a pariah in the gymnastics world and has missed out on professional opportunities because she had the audacity to speak out against the Karolyis and USA Gymnastics. Seys and Moceanus books received a fair amount of attention and sold very well when they were published. But the booksand more importantly, the issues they attempted to addressfaded from view during the years between the Olympics. This is not a criticism of the books or the gymnasts. They more did their part to bring these issues to the fore. Media attention focus, in general, on the sport, tends to be at its peak during the Olympics and the sport fades from mainstream view during the years between the Olympics. And Sey and Moceanu were, for the most part, lone voices on these issues. The rest of the community remain largely silent at least in public and left them out there, twisting in the wind. But with the Indianapolis Stars blockbuster investigation into how USA Gymnastics failed to address reports about predatory coaches, which was published on the eve of the Rio Games, and the subsequent revelation that the team doctor had been accused of sexually abusing scores of gymnasts, USA Gymnastics has been under sustained pressure and scrutiny to admit past wrongdoing which it hasnt done and reform its practices which it has promised to do. And with each passing month, more and more gymnastsmostly former with the exception of Raisman who has not determined whether or not shell train for Tokyohave joined the conversation, offering public support of victims and condemnation of USA Gymnastics. The last time there was this kind of sustained focus on the downsides of womens gymnastics was around the publication of Little Girls in Pretty Boxes in 1. Oprah did an episode about the book, featuring the author and elite gymnasts like Kristie Phillips and Betty Okino a TV movie based on the gymnastics aspects was made. The book also looked at the problems in womens figure skating. But what was missing back in 1. Ryan told the stories of former gymnasts who had come forward to her about abusive coaching, injuries, and eating disorders, but there wasnt a way for other gymnasts to easily join the conversation that the book had started and add their own experiences.