Audrey Thompson:	Welcome to Narrating Salt Lake Utah. This episode is hosted by Audrey Thompson and McKayla's lions and brought to you by the gender studies program at Westminster college.

Audrey Thompson:	Hi everyone! I'm Audrey.

Michaelis Lyons: 	And I'm Mikay. 

Audrey Thompson: 	Today  we’d like to talk to you about a sport that's often overlooked.

Michaelis Lyons: 	Gymnastics. 

Audrey Thompson: 	All athletes are struggling right now, but COVID-19 has hit gymnasts particularly hard. 

Michaelis Lyons: 	It has. Before we get too deep into that, though, I want to briefly cover the trauma that this sport is still recovering from.

Audrey Thomspon: 	You mean Larry Nasser? 

Michaelis Lyons: 	Yes. In 2016 it was brought to light that the USAG or USA Gymnastics organization doctor, Larry Nassar, had been sexually abusing athletes for years. Olympians such as McKayla Maroney, Simone Biles, and Allie Raisman are only a few of the hundreds of athletes that have spoken out about how Nassar sexually abused them and called it medical treatment. As more and more information unraveled, so too did the misconduct get worse. It was revealed that many leaders of the organization knew about what was happening and failed to intervene. 

Audrey Thompson: 	Wow. So this industry has already taken a pretty big beating before COVID happened. 

Michaelis Lyons: 	The sport has been through a lot in the last few years, it's taken a toll on our athletes, Olympians and local gymnasts alike.

Audrey Thompson: 	So how is COVID affecting these athletes? 

Michaelis Lyons: 	Well, everyone was upset when COVID-19 displaced the sports industry. However, some athletes are in a much better place and are more likely to recover their careers from this event than others. Take soccer and volleyball players. For them, this is merely a glitch in a very long road, but for gymnast who already have an extremely narrow window for success, an event like this can decimate their careers.

Audrey Thompson: 	So why do journalists have such a small window for success? 

Michaelis Lyons: 	A lot of it has to do with how the sport affects our bodies. Gymnastics isn't something your body can handle forever, especially at a rigorous competitive level. Gymnasts also have to start at a very young age. So if you're like me and you begin training at age three or four, and by age eighteen your body has gone through 15 years of tumbling, pounding, and just taking an overall beating. All the impacts on your body wear it down until your body just can't handle it anymore.

Audrey Thompson: 	The Olympics are a good example of how little time gymnasts have to succeed. Take Simone Biles. Despite being one of the world's greatest athletes, realistically, this would have been the last year she had a shot at medalling. By the time a gymnast turns 25, her body has burned out from the rigors the sport requires. Did you know it's been 49 years since a gymnast over the age of 19 was able to get an Olympic gold medal? 

Michaelis Lyons: 	Crazy to think about isn't it, most athletes are just starting their professional careers at the age when gymnasts are retiring. Because gymnasts have a limited amount of time to have a career, the time and years they spend training are all the more critical. Every practice, every tumbling pass, every bar chain is significant. Anytime lost in the gym impacts their future, even taking just a month off of practice. Consider five months behind in ability. Getting onto a college gymnastics team is the equivalent to a football player making it into the NFL. That's how hard and competitive the sport is. 

Audrey Thompson: 	Damn, so this doesn't just affect Olympians? 

Michaelis Lyons: 	No, COVID-19 affects gymnastics on all levels, even local ones.

Audrey Thompson:	Gymnasts start getting recruited by colleges at age 12. And by 17, a gymnast knows whether or not she'll go collegiate or for career is over completely.

Michaelis Lyons:	This means that in order for a gymnast to even have a chance at a professional career, they must start at a very young age and they must train rigorously and consistently. Any disruption in their training dramatically skews their chances. 

Audrey Thompson: 	So in short, you'd say the stakes are pretty high.

Michaelis Lyons: 	Extremely high.

Audrey Thompson: 	Mikay, you've been in this profession for 17 years. How do you think COVID-19 will affect the future of these young gymnasts?

Michaelis Lyons: 	Well, I think this is an extremely difficult challenge our young athletes are facing. Some have lost months of training due to quarantine, others have lost the gyms they've trained in because COVID-19 put them out of business.

Audrey Thompson: 	And it's important to know that gymnastics is already a very exclusive sport. Just getting into the door of the sport requires a certain amount of privilege. Gymnastics in short is expensive. Tuition for training on a competitive team can cost more than rent, definitely upwards of $500 a month. And that's without factoring in other expenses: competition fees, training, attire, and equipment such as risk support, scripts, and tape. On top of that, you have medical bills from injuries, paying for private lessons, the time commitment it requires and paying for the commute to and from the gym every day. That's a hefty financial commitment.

Michaelis Lyons: 	Competitive gymnastics is a huge commitment and requires a lot of sacrifice. 

Audrey Thompson:	Also it's a lot of commitment for families. Some families can afford to leave the child at gymnastics for 16 hours a week, but other families need older children to babysit the younger ones. It's a privilege to be able to spend that much time training, and it's a huge financial burden. 

Michaelis Lyons: 	I've met many families who have two children enrolled in the competitive program, and then at a certain point, they can't afford to pay for both. When this happens, the parents, children, and coaches had to make a difficult decision on which child is most likely to succeedm, and which one is going to drop the program. Talent and ambition aren't enough to ensure success. Economic resources are also required. 

Audrey Thompson: 	So you're saying that two gymnasts with the same amount of talent, determination, and commitment don't necessarily have the same likelihood of succeeding?

Michaelis Lyons: 	Exactly. In fact, their chances of having a professional career are largely disproportionate.

Audrey Thompson: 	So how does this privilege relate to COVID-19? 

Michaelis Lyons: 	Well, while some athletes are losing out on crucial training, others have the money to be renting out gyms for private one-on-one lessons with a coach. 

Audrey Thompson: 	And even if they can't afford private lessons now, they can still afford the extra training it takes to get back to the level where they were. Other people don't have that privilege. 

Michaelis Lyons: 	These gymnasts aren't going to fall behind much compared to the ones who can't afford this privileged form of training. Thus an already exclusive sport becomes even more challenging to succeed in. 

Audrey Thompson: 	So only a select few have the resources to emerge from this pandemic at a higher ability level than they were before. Most will be lucky to keep their abilities where they were, let alone improve them. It's also important to know that finances aren't the only privilege that affect most gymnasts. Gymnastics at its core is regarded as a white, elitist sport. And that's mainly in the United States. In the United States, gymnastics and sports are privatized. So this means families have to shell out a bunch of money in order for their child to experience the sport they enjoy. Gymnastics is advertised as a sport for affluent families. You don't see a lot of diversity in the advertisements for gymnastics. In fact, in a 2007 study on diversity of gymnastics populations, only 6.61% of people involved in gymnastics programs were black. And when you are able to see these black individuals on television, the compliments they receive are often backhanded. A lot of people said black people weren't able to 			do gymnastics because their hair got in the way. But Simone Biles and Gabby Douglas have both meddaled gold, so it should be a non-issue. Why are people still arguing about this? 
			
			In addition, NBC got in a lot of backlash for featuring a monkey in a gymnastics uniform alongside their broadcast of Gabby Douglas', um, individual gold medal victory. And they still haven't apologized for it. They just said it was 'poor timing.' 

			So now we've compounded the financial burden. Now only those who can afford to pay for extra training, for extra one-on-one practices with a private coach are going to be the ones that are able to regain the skills they've lost.
			
			Mikay, what ramifications do you expect to see from this? Are we looking at potentially losing generations of gymnasts? 

Michaelis Lyons: 	We certainly might as young gymnasts lose access to training and equipment, we're also missing out on a crucial training period. As these athletes go through puberty, it becomes increasingly harder for their bodies to keep up with the sport. While there are a select few families who can afford private training, most gymnasts are falling behind. 

Audrey Thompson: 	The USAG has tried to mitigate some of this by offering virtual training lessons. But the fact is a lot of the gymnasts don't have access to the expensive gym equipment it takes to realistically train. We have an interview for my sister who is currently training in gymnastics on this discrepancy. 

			Hey, Caroline, welcome to our show. So I hear you're a gymnast. 

Caroline Thompson: 	Yes. 

Audrey Thompson: 	How long have you been doing that? 

Caroline Thompson: 	Um, I have been doing gymnastics since I was six years old and I am 16 now, so pretty sure that's like 15 years.

Audrey Thompson: 	I would say probably 10? 

Caroline Thompson: 	I mean 10, yeah.

Audrey Thompson: 	So I had a few questions about the logistics of gymnastics and how it worked. I hear it's a pretty serious sport?

Caroline Thompson: 	Yeah. 

Audrey Thompson: 	So what's a realistic time commitment? 

Caroline Thompson: 	So for me it's daily. So four days per week, and each practice is four to five hours. Um, with the choice to do two hour practices on Saturdays. And so weekly without the Saturdays, that'd be about 16 hours, give or take.

Audrey Thompson: 	Dang, that's like a part-time job. What are the physical demands of gymnastics? 

Caroline Thompson: 	You have to be really physically strong because the sport uses your entire body, um, and it takes its toll eventually. And so you have to know your own body's limits so that you don't injure yourself. Personally. I have only had one big injury with my back. I got spondylosis. Is what it's called. It wasn't broken, but it was pretty close. So I had to take a break, but it is healed now. And then all the other little ones, mostly just my wrists are weakened because of all the tumbling I do. So I have to wear wrist supports. And I've sprained my ankle, like three times.

Audrey Thompson: 	Got you. 

Caroline Thompson: 	Once you get in that head space of like, this is all I do, and like, once you realize how hard the thing you're doing is, it really takes a toll on your mind and you start thinking like a lot of people who have quit when they're really close to the top is because they've just burned out because they've been doing this for so long that their body like physically cannot do it anymore, so.

Audrey Thompson: 	Dang. Uh, that's, that's dark, but what's like a realistic timeframe that gymnasts have? So it seems to me that it's pretty young that you have to get into this and maintain it. 

Caroline Thompson: 	Yeah. I'd say for Olympic gymnasts, most of the girls are around . . .  To get into the Olympics you have to be 16, at least. And so most of the girls are around 16.

Audrey Thompson: 	Okay, cool. So, I mean, we know that the Olympics got postponed for a year because of COVID. So what do you think this is going to do for gymnastics? I just mean that the training is already so rigorous and now that gyms and businesses have pretty much closed down, do you think that because of all this loss of training we're maybe losing generations of gymnasts?

Caroline Thompson: 	I wouldn't necessarily say we're losing generations. I will say that I do believe that in the next Olympics, we won't have all of the girls that would have been competing this year, which is sad, but it makes sense because they've lost so much training time. And with that level of gymnastics, you have to train and train and train because the level of skills that you're doing is so hard. But I think with the younger ones, it's been pretty okay with my team, at least. They still did their workouts over quarantine because they're back in the gym now and they're taking precautions, but they still did conditioning. A bunch of them have equipment at home to practice with, which was really cool to see. And so I don't think the younger girls are taking it that hard, but I do think the older ones with harder skills, like in the Olympics, I think it will be harder than to jump back into the flow of things because of like mental blocks. If you don't do a skill for a long time, you can develop a      			mental block against it.

Audrey Thompson: 	Oh, definitely. I wanted to dive into something you said a little bit earlier, which was that your game is back open now? 

Caroline Thompson: 	Yes, it has been open for, I think about a week and a half. So that's like six practices, I'm pretty sure. 

Audrey Thompson: 	Dang. How's that going? What's the setup like? 

Caroline Thompson: 	So they, um, from what I know, we take temperatures outside every day, every girl. All coaches have to wear masks and the girls are optional to wear masks. We have a hand washing station outside of the gym, so you wash your hands when you leave and when you come in, and obviously if you use the bathroom, if you eat food. Stuff like that, like normal sanitation. I'm not sure how we're doing six feet apart because for spotting and stuff, you have to touch the girls to spot them and help them so they don't get hurt. But what I've seen is that the groups are smaller and more spread out throughout the gym. 'Cause our gym is pretty big. So we can have multiple groups that are way more than six feet away at a time. Um, and all of our events are spaced out enough that we would be six feet away. But with the amount of girls we have, I think they have switched around the schedules so that we only have two groups of girls at a time. Because how my gym is it's black group, white group, orange group. 
			It's colored. So I think we just have two colors at a time, each practice, which is a lot better because if we had all of us, it would be pretty much impossible to get us all six feet away. And for warmups, we normally do warm ups together, and now we put out hula hoops and you have to stand on the edge of the hula hoops and they've had that measured out and apparently it's six feet apart. So I'd say they're doing pretty well. 

Audrey Thompson: 	Do you think that that's enough in your opinion, should the gym be open? 

Caroline Thompson: 	I don't think the gym should be open because I do know we're going to have another wave because once people said 'it's getting a little bit better, small businesses can open up.' Everyone was like, 'Oh, pandemics over, let's go outside.' And it just ignored all the protocols. So I don't think there'll be open for that long, but I feel like, I know it would be hard to do gymnastics with the mask on, but I feel like that's your best option. And with my gym, the coaches have to, but the girls it's optional and I feel like they should have to wear them. But I know, like, doing certain skills would be really hard because you can't really breathe. So personally, I don't think it should be open quite yet. But, I mean, they're trying. 

Audrey Thompson: 	I guess that's something. 

Caroline Thompson: 	Yeah. 

Audrey Thompson: 	How are, how are your teammates doing? How's everyone's mental health doing? 

Caroline Thompson: 	I honestly think they're doing pretty good. I do think a lot of them have developed mental blocks over certain skills, mostly beam because for my team beam was the, beam and bars were the really iffy events that we had for some of us. So I do think that the break kind of caused us to be like, 'Ooh, can I do the skill anymore?' Which I understand because that's what mental blocks are.

			I think they're doing really well, but I feel like they're going to have to close again, which would just push them back farther. So I don't know if we should have opened them the first place, but from what I've been told by them, they say they're doing well. 

Audrey Thompson: 	I wanted to dive into something you said a little bit earlier, which was about mental blocks. Can you kind of describe what you mean by that? 

Caroline Thompson: 	Um, so for me, mental block, I mostly got it, for example, on beam with your connection, which is the series of skills you do in a row that you have to have in your team as a skill. So most of the time, for me, I did a back walk over backhand spring, which is two backward flipping skills on a four-inch wide beam that is in the air, which is pretty hard. So a mental block is if I had that bill, that skill, solid on the beam and I could do it and I did it over and over again, one day. And then the next day, you just think in your mind, you're like, 'yeah, you did it yesterday, but what if you can't do it today?' And then your body and your brain basically stops you from doing that skill, which is how I feel about it.

			So for me, um, what we call it is balking on a skill. So a balk is basically where you're going to go for it, and then right at the last second, you just stop and you can't. So mental blocks and balking are basically intertwined. 

Audrey Thompson: 	So I got you. So like performance anxiety, or like psyching yourself out?

Caroline Thompson: 	Yeah. 

Audrey Thompson: 	Interesting. What you're doing, sounds super rigorous. 

Caroline Thompson: 	Yeah, it is. 

Audrey Thompson: 	I'm very impressed. 

Caroline Thompson: 	It's a lot. 

Audrey Thompson: 	Well, I think that's all the questions I have for you, Caroline. Thank you so much for being on this podcast. 

Caroline Thompson: 	Yeah.

Audrey Thompson: 	It is interesting to see how COVID-19 has disrupted the daily routine of these gymnasts and coaches. It seems like a hard thing to bounce back from, but my sister seems to have hope, so ultimately it is in the hands of these young gymnasts. 

Michaelis Lyons: 	Our gymnast have been through a lot, but they are strong, hardworking, and determined. And I know that our sport will emerge from this pandemic successfully. 

Audrey Thompson: 	This episode was hosted by Mikay Lyons and Audrey Thompson, and produced by Mikay Lyons and Audrey Thompson. Special thanks to our interviewee, Caroline Thompson, and Kristjane Nord Meyer and Eileen Torrez for their help with our podcast. This episode was produced by the gender studies program and the sociology department at Westminster College.

Jared Winn: 		Editing and sound design by Jared Winn music by Lou Crumbo, and our logo was created by Catherine Nielson.