TORONTO — Brittany Rogers is a grown adult and three years away from her athletic career, but the scathing words of her childhood gymnastics coaches still play like a broken record in her head.
You’re fat. You are stupid. you are not good enough
“I didn’t think I fully understood the extent of how bad it was until I was removed from the sport,” Rogers said. “And it wasn’t until I was fully retired that I was able to reflect and see how it’s impacted me personally today and the consequences I’m still dealing with.”
Rogers, who represented Canada at both the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, is among dozens of current and retired gymnasts who have written an open letter to Sport Canada about abuse in their sport. While alarming in any sport, emotional and physical abuse in gymnastics usually affects minors.
“Something new pops up almost every day,” Rogers said. “My confidence is almost non-existent. I doubt myself. I can’t even look at myself in the mirror sometimes because I’m either so judgmental about my physical appearance or I’m just being told that I’ll never be good enough.”
Rogers, who was weighed at virtually every workout as a child, still trains six days a week because of her intense fear of gaining weight. She fears it. There is no joy in the process.
“People don’t understand the long-term effects of being told they’re fat, they’re stupid, they don’t know how,” said Penny Werthner, an exercise psychologist and dean of kinesiology at the University of Calgary. “If you have been psychologically, emotionally, physically or sexually abused, there will be long-term and often lifelong consequences.”
The list of about 70 gymnasts who signed Monday’s letter has since grown to over 270. It comes a month after dozens of bobsleigh and skeleton athletes wrote a similar letter calling for the resignation of Bobsleigh Canada Skeleton’s acting CEO and high-performance director.
Canada’s Sports Minister Pascale St-Onge on Thursday convened an emergency roundtable with representatives from national organizations such as the Canadian Olympic Committee and Own the Podium. The gymnasts said they were left out of the conversation.
“It was frustrating not to be invited to the table, whether bobsleigh, skeleton or gymnastics athletes,” said Kim Shore, a former Gymnastics Canada board member and a former parent of gymnasts and gymnasts. “Those are the two groups that we know are organized, motivated and speaking up.
“This is a crisis that can only be resolved by bringing the voices demanding change to the table,” the gymnasts tweeted under the name @Gym4ChangeCan. “Athletes are literally *begging* for change. And some of the organizations at this round table are the actual architects and enablers of the crisis we are now facing.”
St-Onge said she is accelerating plans for an independent safe sports mechanism within the Sports Dispute Resolution Center of Canada, which will be mandatory for all national sports organizations. She swears it will be operational by late spring.
In what she called a certain sports crisis in Canada, St-Onge said allegations of mistreatment, sexual abuse or misappropriation of funds have been made against at least eight national sports organizations in the five months since her appointment.
Almost everyone agreed that sports culture in Canada needs to be fundamentally overhauled to prevent abuse in the first place.
“The fun side of the sport, the fun, was taken away from me at a very young age,” said Rogers, who started gymnastics at age 3. “I can’t remember ever having fun with gymnastics. It was a job. You don’t have a job when you’re a kid.”
Shore said the gymnasts made a list of action points. For example, she wants scales to be banned in clubs. Parents should also be allowed to watch their children’s exercises – they are currently locked out in many clubs.
Werthner, who has worked with numerous national and Olympic teams since 1985, said she’s a “fan of the coach-athlete relationship.”
“I think that’s what wins medals. And when it’s good, it’s brilliant and necessary and important,” she said, later adding, “We can actually have healthy athletes, mentally and emotionally and physically, and still be world champion.”
Two-time trampoline Olympic champion Rosie MacLennan was part of the round table as COC athletes representative and went home optimistic.
“You could hear a sense of urgency from a lot of stakeholders that is needed at this point,” MacLennan said. “Obviously it’s the first step of many to come.”
Rogers, 28, wrote about her years of emotional abuse in a lengthy Instagram post this week and received a wave of support.
“It honestly brought tears to my eyes,” she said. “If I can touch one person or 100 people, it doesn’t matter. … I hope it encourages other people to share their stories.”
She works in digital advertising in Calgary and coaches kids at night: “I want to be that support I never had. They need to have fun and enjoy what they do. I just want it to be different for her. So I’ll do whatever it takes to give them a positive experience.”
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