The vultures are circling - blame and corruption in USA gymnastics

We have all been mesmerized by medals.  We are all involved in the unhealthy culture of sacrificing young women in the pursuit of extraordinary achievement. Nassar and Karolyi could not have existed without our interest.  We have long known of the inhumanity inherent in elite sport.  Is it really our place to condemn those who fed our fascination for so long?  

Liukin has done the honest thing and resigned.  In the past he has apologized for any wrongdoing and seemed prepared to make changes.   He is right when he says we are all looking for someone to blame.  Emotions are running high.  I do not for one moment believe that Liukin is guilty of anything worse than unwise, misplaced, thoughtless words.  He is guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  But no crime has been committed and there are many who have far more difficult questions to answer.

Well now a new head coach can be found and we will see how much difference it will make.  Maybe a new cherry on the cake will make it look more appetising. But if beneath the pretty decoration the cake is rotten still, what's the difference?

Name calling and recriminations - I have seen them both in social media, far too many of them, mostly without foundation - will achieve absolutely nothing.  I have been studying gymnastics, Russia and the former Soviet Union intensively for the last seven years, less systematically for the previous 30.  I still don't know enough about any single coach to point at them and say 'guilty',  There are things and people I feel uncomfortable about, but I am not a one person judge and jury. Was Liukin complicit in the Nassar cover up?  Almost certainly, knowingly or otherwise, as he was part of the leadership team.  There will probably be things that, with hindsight, he wishes he could change.  He will have made mistakes navigating the fine line between tough coaching and abusive coaching .  We have now the benefit of hindsight; but at the time his actions would have seemed right and justifiable, while all was going well.  

I doubt he was a monster though, and none of us have any right to judge him guilty by social media.  At least he is now free to participate fully in any investigation into the culture of USAG.  Resignation was not only the honourable choice, it was also, probably, the only choice.

But the problem of USA gymnastics is far bigger than blame.  Let me take another perspective.  It is 100 years to the day since women in the UK were granted the vote.  A century later, we have women as world leaders, but violence against women is still almost as great a problem as it was in 1917.   The appalling circumstances in USA gymnastics are part of a picture of society's failure to listen to and to empower women, and a tendency to belittle and disbelieve their experiences of violence.

Gymnastics has found itself at the forefront of this difficult subject and should take a lead globally in addressing abuse - violence - in sport.  This tragedy needs to be turned inside out and back to front again and again until we understand the reasons it took place and can suggest ways of moving forward, force some good for the sake of women globally.    All USAG/MSU/USOC can do is to get their houses in order.  They are not doing this very well because blame is their only worry, and blame is indeed the idea in the heads and on the lips of most onlookers.  But  a more positive action is needed to neutralise the evil and re-establish a cycle of good.  My suggestion is that the FIG medical commission lead an agenda for change with the IOC to address abuse in sport.  Gymnastics will not recover by hiding in the corner.  As others have said there needs to be an independent investigation into the Nassar affair and all the surrounding circumstances.  Lessons have to be learned, best practice has to be develooed, findings and recommendations have to be disseminated.  Implications and assumptions have to be identified and acknowledged.

The athlete-survivors are doing amazing things but it should not be up to them to effect change; after all, they are not the ones at fault.  And is the imprisonment of one man really such a great victory?  It took over 200 broken women to come forward and confront one demon.  Many more enablers - and worse - survive behind the smokescreen of the confusion, delay and indecision of the last years. Document shredders will no doubt have been working overtime in many different institutions.  Decades of invisibility are rotting the sport of women's gymnastics from the inside out.  That it took 200 women to overcome one unhealthy man is a disgrace to us all.  For the past decades we were quite satisfied to read the books, to tut with disapproval, to feel satisfied that we 'knew' about gymnastics; but we didn't want change, we wanted medals.  USA gymnastics culture is not just about Nassar, it is about all of us.  Weren't you all only too pleased when the Karolyis came to Texas and made Mary Lou Retton turn gold?

Blame is important when people are looking for a quick resolution of their uncomfortable feelings, and when they want to say 'not me'.  It is understandable when emotions run high, but it is also largely ineffective and counterproductive.  I am aware that there is a history of rooting out guilty individuals in tin pot trials.  McCarthy is a name that comes to mind. In the McCarthy trials good people were thrown beneath the train on the basis of the thinnest evidence.   Surely we in gymnastics do not need to repeat the errors of this past by social media.  For a start at least, Liukin is innocent until proved guilty, and he has not even been charged as yet.  Innocent of which crimes? Being a world beating gymnast?  Creating Olympic champions?  Being of Russian ethnicity?  

We need to begin to stand back and look to ourselves for solutions.  Blame, anger, retribution  and resignations will only get us so far - we need to decide what the real change is that we want to see, and how that marries with the kind of competition and sport we want to support.  

For myself I cannot support a sport that covers up cruelty and abuse in the pursuit of medals.  Nor can I support the empty blaming of individuals whose wrongdoing has not been established in a court of law.  Any evidence of this needs to be treated fairly and impartially to identify lessons to be learned.  So, where next?