Gymnastics #24 - The Road to Paris

I enjoyed Simone rising. Really liked hearing from Svetlana Boguinskaya again. Bogi remains one of my favorites to follow on IG because she's a positive, joyful person. She said she's suffered from depression in the past and she was very intense when competing, but she's supportive and kind in all her comments about today's gymnasts.
 
Are there any examples of very successful gymnasts without abusives coaches? Obviously I would rather people especially children, are happy than successful, but we will always have crazy parents who will push their children regardless of the costs. So positiv examples would be very good. Jade Carey maybe?
 
Are there any examples of very successful gymnasts without abusives coaches? Obviously I would rather people especially children, are happy than successful, but we will always have crazy parents who will push their children regardless of the costs. So positiv examples would be very good. Jade Carey maybe?

Shawn Johnson always said that Chow wasn't abusive. Gabby later fell out with him bc of a financial dispute but never said he was abusive either.
 
The Nastia Liukin Era wasn't particularly artistic although Nastia personally had good lines and form. I mean, Patterson's gymnastics were relatively similar to Memmel's, Johnson's, Sacramone's, etc.

It's ironic that Patterson was trained by Valerie Liukin.

OTOH gymnasts like Raisman, Andrade, Memmel, etc. were ideal for making the sport measurable by clear standards because they did relatively clean execution of high level skills without a lot of "it factor" reflected in the score. (I do think Simone and Gabby do have "it factor" although I don't think they need(ed) it.)

Patterson was coached by Evgeny Marchenko.
 
I just saw this fluff piece about Tim Daggett on Facebook. He got injured and could have lost his leg at the 1987 World Gymnastics Championships in Rotterdam.

I opted to put it here because he sometimes is a commentator for events, but I don't remember him being at Nationals or Trials.

These athletes come back from incredible injuries in a short amount of time.


There's more to the story than just what's in that little clip.

https://youtu.be/olF6SSe8XhE?si=GoaZLJ0-v9-3vDxd - Part I

https://youtu.be/O-14PRDvv0E?si=-lqJq8zdgQoeusRM - Part II
 
Are there any examples of very successful gymnasts without abusives coaches? Obviously I would rather people especially children, are happy than successful, but we will always have crazy parents who will push their children regardless of the costs. So positiv examples would be very good. Jade Carey maybe?
Dominique Moceanu loved trained with Alexandrov. She gives him the full credit of coaching her up to Olympic level. The Karolyis told him one day, just like that, not to come back to their gym. This was before the 1995 Nationals. Probably they were afraid that he would get all the credit for her progress in the sport. His banishment from the gym affected her for a very long time.

She also had a lot of affection for her coaches in Florida (the ones she trained with before moving to Houston).

I'm just finishing up her book. If anyone needs more reasons to hate Bela and Marta.... I didn't know that Marta basically blackballed Dominique from making a comeback in 2005/2006, by setting, and then changing, the criteria for qualifying to Nationals.

Her father was a real piece of work, too.
 
"Simone Biles Rising" is already the number one show on Netflix. There are more episodes scheduled for the fall. I hope she doesn't have cameras following her throughout the Olympics. Too much stress. And I hope she's backing off of social media since she repeatedly has said that it's not good for her.

I loved what all the former gymnasts on these two episodes had to say. I have always loved Aly Raisman, and I'm so glad that Simone has her as a friend and supporter. Based on the trailers, they seem to have more former gymnasts lined up to talk in later episodes, including Dominique Moceanu and Nadia Comaneci.


ITA. But, I think most people how criticize her haven't bothered to learn the facts and don't really care to learn them. That includes a lot of the media.

I do think it's true that Simone didn't do a lot to explain the twisties very clearly at the time, but she had a lot to deal with, and I still think that the media could have done more to explain the situation without her detailing it.

Explaining it without the use of jargon would have been a real plus. No one knew what "twisties" meant, because it is gymnastics slang. Saying instead "she lost her sense of spatial awareness" and explaining what is spatial awareness and why it is important in this sport would have gone a long way, IMO.
 
I tend to think she’s just fine right now. One of the men being suspiciously masked at training has me more concerned than her Instagram caption.
Is there any reason to believe this is anything beyond Brody being understandably cautious? I'm actually surprised that more of the athletes aren't masking given that they are all traveling through various airports and then waiting in processing lines and being in close proximity to each other. (A friend of mine just got COVID, and she thinks she got it flying back from visiting family. She is too sick to do her usual undemanding daily routine.) How awful would it be to come back from a horrible injury only to get sick just as you are about to compete in the Olympics?
 
Let me know your thoughts

I’ve been working on connections

So good. Send me the QR code for your merch store so I can support your training.
 
Are there any examples of very successful gymnasts without abusives coaches? Obviously I would rather people especially children, are happy than successful, but we will always have crazy parents who will push their children regardless of the costs. So positiv examples would be very good. Jade Carey maybe?
I might be wrong (I don't follow gymnastics nearly as closely as I follow figure skating), but I don't think anyone has ever said anything blatantly negative about Mihai Brestyan, Aly Raisman's coach.
 
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I’ve only heard positive things about Liang Chow, who coached Shawn Johnson and Gabby Douglas. Norah Flatley praised his coaching in an interview once, saying he looked out for the athletes and would bring his gymnasts food at camp.

As for the Landis, Madison Kocian seems to be on good terms with them, and I believe Simone asked for her opinion before deciding to work with them.
 
ETA: I hope nothing negative ever comes out about the Landis, because they seem like such supportive and reasonable coaches. (It seems like in gymnastics, every time someone says that, a few years later, something terrible comes out about that coach or coaching team.:yikes:)

I remember Simone saying something pre-Tokyo about being the only Nassar victim still competing and how she feels responsibility to stick around or else people might start to forget about it and never change things. :fragile:She puts a lot of pressure on herself for what shouldn't be her job. But she's probably right about certain people wanting to "move on" and not have to deal with it anymore.

Yikes. I can't say I'm that surprised - as I mentioned in my initial post, with gymnastics coaches these days, I hold my breath and basically wait until something negative is revealed. :(
I think Simone’s long term success has more to do with her and her family than any environmental factors. She strikes me as someone who would not tolerate bad coach behavior. Given that she was clearly a star as a junior, if a coach even tried to us abusive methods, they’d have to walk it back pretty quick as she would be likely to speak out and switch gyms easily. I think Simone and her mom have done more for the “no bullsh!t” movement than any people other than Denhollander.
 
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I think Simone’s long term success has more to do with her and her family than any environmental factors. She strikes me as someone who would not tolerate bad coach behavior. Given that she was clearly a star as a junior, if a coach even tried to us abusive methods, they’d have to walk it back pretty quick as she would be likely to speak out and switch gyms easily. I think Simone and her mom have done more for the “no bullsh!t” movement than any people other than Hollander.
Agreed. Simone also lucked out with her original coach who really is a good egg (she has a book coming out right now -
The Balance: My Years Coaching Simone Biles https://a.co/d/0UogPj

then Nellie decided to build a gym for her which makes the coaches accountable to the gymnast’s family. A completely differEnt power dynamic for Simone, I wonder though if it translates to the other gymnasts there.
 
I might be wrong (I don't follow gymnastics nearly as closely as I follow figure skating), but I don't think anyone has ever said anything blatantly negative Mihai Brestyan, Aly Raisman's coach.
There were definitely complaints when he coached the Israeli team in the 1990s but I can't find anything about it online.
 
There were definitely complaints when he coached the Israeli team in the 1990s but I can't find anything about it online.
If he crossed the line in Boston, I would think I would have heard something. But part of that may be the culture here… financially comfortable Italian and Jewish families had their kids there. I could see him getting away with yelling that could be interpreted as borderline, but if it was abusive, a lot of parents would have pulled their princesses out.
 
I might be wrong (I don't follow gymnastics nearly as closely as I follow figure skating), but I don't think anyone has ever said anything blatantly negative about Mihai Brestyan, Aly Raisman's coach.
I suspect that, like a lot of gymnastics coaches, he was negligent at best when it came to Aly's eating. In an interview this past week, Aly said that, at one point, on a flight to a competition, she was so hungry that she ate a power bar, but she was so aware of how much coaches frowned on eating that she ate it in secret in the airplane bathroom. Even if that was a reference to the Karolyis, it's hard to believe that Brestyan wasn't aware of how little Aly was eating.

Aly says that, when she had some medical tests done, her body fat was so low that the doctor was very alarmed and told her that he had never seen an athlete with such low body fat. She asked him to tell her it would be fine, but he wouldn't. He made it clear that it was very dangerous. She says that there have been some long-term consequences for her health. She can't work out or she gets migraines and gets incredibly tired. In the last few years, she has had to be hospitalized a couple of times with stroke-like symptoms. She couldn't remember her name or talk or even really move. I don't think she explicitly said that it was due to how she treated her body, but that was what she seemed to be implying. I supposed it's possible that her coaches were trying hard to get her to eat more. But, if I had an athlete who was that unhealthy, I would want an intervention and would not let them work out with me until they started eating better and were healthier.

I think Simone’s long term success has more to do with her and her family than any environmental factors. She strikes me as someone who would not tolerate bad coach behavior. Given that she was clearly a star as a junior, if a coach even tried to us abusive methods, they’d have to walk it back pretty quick as she would be likely to speak out and switch gyms easily. I think Simone and her mom have done more for the “no bullsh!t” movement than any people other than Denhollander.
The podcast interview that Simone did with Alex Cooper gives some pretty good insight into Simone's relationship with the Landis. I don't think Simone calls all of the shots, though I doubt her mother would have put up with anything abusive. When Simone originally told the Landis that she wanted to go to the Paris Olympics, she was very surprised when they said no. They thought she had a history of putting too many expectations on herself. They wanted her to take things slowly, get back in the gym, start addressing her twisties, and take things one step at a time and then eventually make a decision about Paris. OTOH, when she first started visiting the gym to see the girls after Tokyo, Laurent would try to get her to workout and not just play around on the tramp.

Simone said she couldn't even look at Laurent when she withdrew in Tokyo because she felt like she had failed him and let him down. She said Laurent tries not to let anything get to him, but she knew this would get to him. (Sadly, Simone still seems to feel like she let a lot of people down in Tokyo, and I don't get the sense that she is as confident as some might think.) She doesn't say anything negative about how the Landis treated her in Tokyo. In fact, she says that Cecile helped her a lot after she withdrew.

Just before Alex interviewed Simone, Alex met Laurent and watched him working with Simone in the gym. Alex (who was a college athlete) said that it seemed like Laurent has a very high standard for her in the best way and that he is fierce and loyal in a good way.
 
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I have heard the things about the Landis in the past, but I'd also like to believe they have changed for the better. All their students seem to think the world of Cecile in particular. I am interested to see who WCC can pull once the Landis leave though.
 
I am not sure about the Landis. Something about Laurent gives me red flag vibes. This interview in particular.

 
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