The claustrophobic reality of Italian gymnastics
Trigger warning: mention of eating disorders and related topics
Image credit: Corriere della Sera, Redazione Sport (from Redazione “Le Iene")
We all wonder, regardless of scale or extent , what it would be like to lead alternative lives.
What we would change, what options we’d choose instead.
In this case, gymnastics represents a regret for me. If I could go back, I’d sign up in an instant.
You might wonder why I didn’t have this urge earlier on as a child, which is to be expected considering the dynamic nature of the sport, a way to justify all that unsettled jumping around. Gymnastics, at least in Ascoli, was a relatively niche sport: you’d expect most girls to play volleyball, or ballet, and boys to play football. I’m aware the picture I’m painting is a rather broad one but I lived in a small province and branching out was rare, especially when you didn’t have the practical possibilities to do so. Until high school, I’d never even met someone who did gymnastics but in 2011, things changed.
Gymnastics made its debut to pop-culture through the docu-reality series “Ginnaste Vite Parallele” and whether you were into it or not, most teenagers would watch MTV, and it wasn’t long before the rest of us began waiting impatiently on weekday afternoons in front of the TV. Having said that, the programme doesn’t owe its success solely to the MTV platform broadcasting it. Constantly alternating the disciplined athlete world with footage of everyday life crafted in an original format, where plot lines didn’t hesitate to emerge. All those hours of filming, boiled down into 30 minutes episodes, were displaying storylines that didn’t require actors. Ginnaste vite parallele was rather about people who made a shared life choice: leaving home to chase the Olympics with no guarantees of success, where they could expect the most rigorous training they would ever receive waiting for them.
It was a genuine experiment, that began its filming on a portable camera, along with supportive ones . It was real, a documentary on what it means for your life to be led by discipline along with its side effects, which mostly manifested itself in the gymnasts’ frequent outbursts. Considering the level of competition they signed themselves up for, the pressure would be immense, especially considering that the environment they interacted with the most was feeding them a skewed narrative about what matters. However, the actual cost of their dream managed to escape the eyes of the audience, who were in turn fed a romanticised, rose-tinted narrative of ambition.
6 years ago, Carlotta Ferlito, along with other fellow teammates, reported the presence of an abuse of power in Italian Gymnastics to the authorities for the first time, as well as how this was responsible for triggering the most undesirable consequences in young athletes. Let’s contextualise this more. Carlotta is an Italian gymnast and a two-time Olympian, representing her country at the 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics. In Ginnaste, she was an undeniable leader, bringing the team forward and was responsible for the programme’s visibility. She was the reason why I fell in love with the sport, merely from the perspective of a spectator. She had the most stubborn attitude during training and she wasn’t an easy character, but she would never give up. I admired her, how determined she was and I still do to this day, as I continue to follow her journey on social media. In recent years, her content regarding competions seemed to mysteriously diminish and it wasn’t clear whether she was going to compete in Tokyo, honouring her dream one last time.
Finally, or rather unfortunately, Carlotta revealed how she was forced to leave the gymnastic world on Le Iene, a satirical show that is quite popular in Italy and often leaves space for more serious reports. What Le Iene broadcasted, however, wasn’t just an announcement of the athlete’s resignation. The interview is an official declaration of the pervasive psychological abuse that Carlotta, along with her teammates, endured for years. She recalls comments on her weight, words like ‘pig’ being used during training. Being weighed every week was an intimidating ritual: imagine having to submit yourself to a regular collection of judgments and ruthless mortification. Carlotta shares the anecdote of calling her dad from the gym, at the age of 8, desperately asking for tips on how to lose a kilo, having been told off about her weight gain. The athlete confesses disordered patterns of eating too, induced by the pressure of competing, where she would skip dinner before the 2012 London Olympics, persuaded by the ever-present perfectionist mentality. Moreover, her physical safety was put at extreme risk when pressured to compete right after a World Championship and the American Cup. She took part in the 2016 Jesolo Trophy, where she injured herself performing on the beam, despite confessing how exhausted she was.
These are just a few examples of what led many gymnasts to denounce how systematically toxic that environment was, to the extent that, immersed in it, they believed it to be normal. Because gymnasts begin their career at an extremely young age, they see their athletic world structured in a set way, which stops them from questioning it as problematic. If anything, any health obstacle was seen as exactly that, an obstacle, an imperfection that was getting in the way of a bigger goal. These reports expose the pervasiveness of this dangerous schema in the world of sport, where the only way to measure any sort of success/satisfaction is through results. This is a familiar emphasis that steals the focus away from what actually should matter, what values sport is capable of teaching, the creative side of it and the resilience you gain from it. There’s a very fine line between dedication and oppression that we’re invited to reflect on, as that’s exactly what seemed to be happening: gymnasts were metaphorically solicited to be stuck in their youth, encouraged to stay agile, light, timeless. For as long as possible.
Unsurprisingly, the courage to speak up 6 years ago only obtained defamation charges. However, the bitterness of being kicked out, without the closure she deserved, fuelled Carlotta’s courage to end her silence. Stepping up not just for herself and her peers, but for all the generations that don’t deserve to be stretched inhumanely until they break.
