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With the Paris Olympics set to begin in two weeks, there might be no sport better poised for U.S. dominance than women's gymnastics, and the team's expected success in Paris will mark a major turnaround for USA Gymnastics, the organization that oversees the sport in the U.S. Just six years ago, the organization was at an all-time low on the brink of shutdown by U.S. Olympic officials after a massive sex abuse scandal. NPR's Becky Sullivan reports on how USA Gymnastics has picked up the pieces in the years since.
BECKY SULLIVAN, BYLINE: At the start of 2018, things were grim for USA Gymnastics. Its longtime team doctor, Larry Nassar, had just been sentenced to essentially life in prison after hundreds of young female gymnasts had come forward to say he had used his position to sexually assault them. Lawsuits against USA Gymnastics were piling up, major sponsors fled, and the athletes themselves were the biggest critics of all.
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JESSICA HOWARD: We all love our sport, and we want it to come across to everybody watching, to everybody who might fall in love with it that it's safe. And it's not safe right now.
SULLIVAN: This is Jessica Howard, one of Nassar's victims. She told CBS that the organizational culture at USA Gymnastics was partly to blame for the abuse.
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HOWARD: Emotional abuse is rampant, and physical abuse is out there. And sexual abuse is a byproduct of what happens when that is the culture.
SULLIVAN: That problematic culture started at the very top, former gymnasts have said. For decades, the women's program at USA Gymnastics was run by Marta Karolyi. Among the many gymnasts she worked with over the years was Dominique Dawes, who was part of the team that won the all-around gold medal at the 1996 Olympics.
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DOMINIQUE DAWES: What we experienced in the '90s, it was evident that it was not a healthy culture. People talked about the toxic culture. They talked about the abuses. But I think people were just in awe of what we were able to accomplish because they're like - but they made history; they're amazing. So, like, people turned a blind eye to the abuse.
SULLIVAN: The Karolyi regime was characterized by grueling training schedules and pressure to perform through serious injuries. Parents were not allowed to accompany their daughters to required training camps at the Karolyi facility in Texas, yet that's where much of Larry Nassar's abuse took place. Karolyi herself has long denied any knowledge of the abuse. She retired right after the 2016 Olympics just before the allegations against him were widely publicized. As for USA Gymnastics, the page began to turn in 2021. That's when the organization settled a lawsuit from the victims of Nassar's abuse by agreeing to pay out $380 million, and it assigned a board seat to one of the survivors. Here's the victim's attorney, John Manly, talking to NPR that year.
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JOHN MANLY: The survivors gave up money to get that. And the reason that's important is because they fundamentally want to change the culture of money and metals being the only thing that matters because that way they can protect other women, girls and boys and men from this happening to them.
SULLIVAN: One of the changes at USA Gymnastics has been to decentralize control of the women's program. In 2022, it hired three team officials to fill the old leadership job that had been held solely by Marta Karolyi. In two of those three new officials are former Olympic gymnasts themselves, including Alicia Sacramone Quinn, who is now the program's strategic lead. She'll be the first to admit that things weren't so healthy when she was a competitor, when emotions and complaints were effectively banned.
ALICIA SACRAMONE QUINN: Like, I know I wouldn't have gone, like, hey, I don't think I can do 45 beam routines today, and that would have been, like, accepted.
SULLIVAN: Now Quinn says, communication between USA Gymnastics and its athletes is much more open.
QUINN: I think it's nice for us...
SULLIVAN: Yeah.
QUINN: ...Because we know where they stand, and I think it's great for them because we're going to respect their knowledge of their own bodies and what they're capable of doing. And we can adjust the program, so everybody's on the same page.
SULLIVAN: That's thanks in part to the example set by team leader Simone Biles, who is 27 and one of four returning Olympians on this year's team. Biles famously withdrew from several events at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 out of concern for her mental health. Now she and her teammates feel more empowered to speak up.
SIMONE BILES: So I think now athletes are a little bit more in tune, and we trust what our gut is saying and just taking mental health a little bit more serious.
SULLIVAN: Still, there may be more progress yet to make, said Dominique Dawes, the '96 Olympian who talked to me a couple of weeks ago at the Olympic trials in Minneapolis.
DAWES: I think there's a perception that there's a culture change. For this generation that's on the floor competing, I think it's healthier for them, but we don't know what's happening with the younger generations because they still don't have a voice.
SULLIVAN: That's important to note, she says, because female gymnasts are among the youngest of all Olympic athletes. In fact, the youngest person on all of Team USA is the gymnast Hezly Rivera, who just turned 16 last month. Becky Sullivan, NPR News.
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