Americans like to win, and they love their Olympic heroes. For USA Gymnastics, victory at all costs was its directive — even embracing, as one former gymnast puts it in a new Netflix documentary, “the notion we would sacrifice our young to win.”
“Athlete A,” directed by San Francisco filmmakersBonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, is infuriating, anger-inducing, frustrating and, ultimately, inspiring. You’ll be doing a lot of head-shaking and exaggerated exhaling during its 103 minutes. Its brain is a meticulously structured fly-on-the-wall procedural of investigative journalism, but its heart and soul are the courageous victims of Dr. Larry Nassar, who was found to have sexually abused hundreds of female athletes in his 29 years as national team doctor and at Michigan State University, where he was employed (he is serving what amounts to a life sentence)..
Many have rightly compared “Athlete A” to“Spotlight,”the Oscar-winning feature from 2015 that dramatized the Boston Globe’s exposé of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. The camera is embedded with investigative reporters at the Indianapolis Star, which is just down the street from USA Gymnastics headquarters.
The wheels were set in motion by Rachel Denhollander, a former gymnast who alerted the Michigan State University police of Nassar’s abuse — which she says happened once a month while she was in training — and also called the Indy Star with her story. Soon, the newspaper was able to find more gymnasts with similar stories of abuse, and it discovered a system of cover-ups and intimidation at the highest levels of USA Gymnastics, from then-CEO Steve Penny, who is currently facing charges of tampering with evidence, to then-national team coach Márta Károlyi.
The Károlyis (Márta succeeded husband Béla as U.S. coach) were famously hard-driving and strict, with Béla eventually leaving as coach due to his controversial methods, which included accusations of verbal and physical abuse. They learned those methods in their native Romania, then a communist country, and they gained fame for coaching Nadia Comăneci to gold at the 1976 Olympics before defecting to the United States.
Their iron-fisted methods created a chilling atmosphere that some say laid the foundation for sexual abuse to occur.
As ex-gymnast Jennifer Sey — a San Francisco resident whose 2008 book “Chalked Up: My Life in Elite Gymnastics,” detailed her physical and emotional battles — says in “Athlete A,” “Sexual abusers are everywhere — sexual abuse was a norm. We were so beaten down, it made us so obedient.”
Nassar, though was different. He was nice. He’d show concern, joke around, smile. “He would sneak us food and candy and leave us stuff under our pillows,” recalls former Olympian Jamie Dantzscher.
Gymnasts would look forward to treatment, because Nassar would legitimately relieve pain from the pounding that young bodies took in intense training.
Then, of course, Nassar would go much further. Some details in “Athlete A” are hard to hear.
但我们知道“运动员”实际上是一个人. She is Maggie Nichols, a U.S. national team member who likely was left off the 2016 Olympic team because, a year earlier, she and her parentshad notified USA Gymnastics on Nassar’s conduct. Her story lays bare the cancer inside USA Gymnastics, as her allegations against Nassar were covered up at all levels of the organization.
That includes Márta Károlyi, who passed the allegation up the chain, and Penny. Since the states in which they operate — Texas and Indiana — require any person who is made aware of a sexual abuse allegation against a child to inform authorities immediately, they clearly broke the law.
By now you’re familiar with the Nassar story, given its dense media coverage, and the state of USA Gymnastics, which is still under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department and under reorganization. Márta Károlyi resigned as coach after the 2016 Olympics, Penny is facing charges and, of course, Nassar is behind bars for life. A 2019 documentary,“At the Heart of Gold,”focuses on Nassar’s legal trial.
But “Athlete A” gives us the story behind the story. It’s a terrific journalism movie, but it’s also a story of young women who persevered and found justice against the odds.
这是一个可怕的句子write. Protecting young women should never under any circumstances be “against the odds,” and yet our institutions failed them.
Honestly, when the gymnastics competition at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics happens, I don’t think I’ll be watching.
N“Athlete A”:Documentary. Directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk. (PG-13. 103 minutes.) Available on Netflix starting Wednesday, June 24.