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3 Scary Facts About Gymnastics You Won’t Hear in Athletes’ Sound Bites
The balance beam is the width of an iPhone, and other nerve-rattling realities
Behind the beauty and grace of Olympic gymnastics lies an unforgiving truth. Succeeding at the sport takes more than skill, persistence, and a helping hand from luck when it matters most. It also takes exceptional bravery. Here are three reasons why.
1. The balance beam is the width of an iPhone
In Olympic gymnastics, the balance beam is about four inches wide, or narrower than an iPhone in landscape mode. It’s four feet tall. On it, gymnasts must do — among other elements — a 180-degree split and a turn on one foot.
How do athletes know they’re ready for the white-knuckle moves? Or for routines like those that won gold for Suni Lee in Tokyo?
In his The Story of the Olympics, the Pulitzer Prize–winning sportswriter Davie Anderson quotes Mary Lou Retton, the gold medalist in the women’s all-around at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, on how gymnasts prepare for the terrors. Retton said:
“If you’re a gymnast, someone should be able to sneak up and drag you out of bed at midnight and push you out onto some strange floor, and you should be able to do your entire routine sound asleep in your pajamas. Without one mistake.”
2. Some female gymnasts have the bone density of postmenopausal women in their 70s
Gymnastics can be brutal for anyone, but it has unique risks for young female athletes, who often eat so little they stop menstruating, or don’t start when others do.
The sportswriter Joan Ryan talks about the dangers in her Little Girls in Pretty Boxes, an exposé of abuses in gymnastics and figure-skating:
“In staving off puberty to maintain the ‘ideal’ body shape, girls risk their health in ways their male counterparts never do. They starve themselves, for one, often in response to their coaches’ belittling insults…
