


The truth is that Nassar’s perversion was empowered by the culture of USA Gymnastics. Nassar’s crimes-and their reach-are disturbing in their own right. That carefully-curated image proved central to USA Gymnastics’ attempts to snub the allegations that, for over 20 years, Nassar sexually abused more than 500 women and girls, most of them gymnasts, at both USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University. Before then, the erstwhile USA Gymnastics team doctor was almost stoically well-regarded, considered a “miracle worker” who welded-quite literally-the gilded era of American gymnastics. The name Larry Nassar is now synonymous with crimes so appalling they earned him a January 2018 sentence of multiple lifetimes in prison. Even more chilling was the discovery that USA Gymnastics not only ignored, but actively enabled, the sexual abuse of its athletes for decades. gymnasts who charmed global audiences a month prior had been serially molested by the man who was also their doctor. But its name is soiled for perpetuity by the September 2016 revelations that many of the same U.S. squad in the team event boasted a margin of victory over Russia so great that the ensuant medal ceremony felt less like the conclusion of a hard-fought competition than a coronation.įive years later, USA Gymnastics still wears the crown-and nothing suggests that it will shed it in Tokyo.

Led by Simone Biles-who became the most decorated U.S. And rightly so: American female gymnasts were on top of the world. In 2016, during the last Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, mention of USA Gymnastics conjured up little other than awe.
