Gymnastics, a father: “I understood late, for my daughter it was a nightmare”
The scandal that has taken the world by storm gymnasticswith the alleged abuse on female athletes for them to stay thin e non fattessero has now exploded and it is no longer just a question of circumscribed cases, linked to the world of rhythmic and the “blue butterflies“. Verified one by one by a pool of lawyers and psychologists, gathered by frightened and traumatized parents and children – reads the Corriere della Sera – the 197 cases catalogued in a dossier from the association Change the Game which will be presented today at the Rome Foreign Press Association, they illustrate serious episodes or very serious happened in dozens of small and large gyms 15 regions training on girls aged between 8 and 22, entrusted both to well-known coaches and to almost unknown coaches. There is body shamingthere are food deprivations, discrimination, beatings against whom eat a cookie too much or misses an exercisesix-hour workouts for very small gymnasts, isolated from their peers and from school system.
“On 5 May 2018 – the father of one of these girls tells Corriere – after seeing a beaten partner from the coach with the clubs (it was not the first episode), my daughter decided to tell me everything. I drove seven hours for hug her and in front of one Pizza he told me what he had suffered: the systematic tripping to drop her that they got her serious back problemsthe brutal sentences, the food denied. The dream crumbled: it took one Psychologist to assess and repair the disaster. Giada started when she was 4, everything went smoothly up to 8. Then what only now seems madness to us: the competitive spirit to 8 years oldthe selections, the championships, the four hours in the gym everyday. I’ve always tried to be rational: never seen a workout, never asked the coaches about my daughter’s qualities like so many other parents. I trusted. My wife and I have underrated for too long i signals Of suffering of our daughter. I reported because I want no more girls to suffer what my daughter had to suffer”.
#Gymnastics #cases #violence #Beatings #clubs #tripping