Gymnastics: Two athletes make serious allegations against associations

17-year-old Meolie Jauch is giving up her career. “Because mentally it’s no longer possible,” she says. starAuthor Charlotte Wirth can understand this very well from her own experience (you can read more about it here). But the surprising end of a promising gymnast is apparently just the tip of the iceberg.

Two fellow sufferers, Tabea Alt and Carina Kröll, spoke up on Saturday and also had a hard time with the bandages. The multiple champion Kröll writes in a long statement: “Today I am observing more and more how young gymnasts just have to function, not be heard, fall apart because of it and quit far too early or are sorted out.”

She criticizes a system in which “after every goal has been achieved, the next one is immediately demanded” and there is a lack of appreciation for what has been achieved. For her, this meant that participation in the 2023 World Cup was “less significant” than it actually should be. The reason: Because Kröll has never been to the Olympics, she has forgotten how to respect her successes. According to Kröll, it is “inevitable to think like that.”

Physical health also suffers from sport, says the gymnast. Accordingly, even attending an important doctor’s appointment was “problematic”. Even as a young person, you forget to give your body breaks when it’s no longer possible. She concludes by demanding that it is time for something to change.

Tabea Alt, a former German artistic gymnast with great success during her career, also published a . She demands: “This system must change in order to be able to develop further.”

Alt explains that she also suffered from the enormous pressure and had to sacrifice more than was healthy for the sport. “Over all these years, my health was deliberately put at risk by ignoring medical instructions and letting me compete in gymnastics with several FRACTURES (broken bones),” she writes. Both athletes also explicitly address the topic of eating disorders; their colleagues Kim Bui and Emelie Petz had previously reported on it. According to Alt, dealing with one’s own body is controlled and manipulated by others.

The ex-gymnast tried several times to address these problems internally – but was always ignored. “Today I know it was systematic physical and mental abuse. We finally have to be heard!” said Alt. She sees her statement as the starting signal for a public debate about changes in top-class sport.

The “” asked the German Gymnastics Federation (DTB) and the Swabian Gymnastics Federation (STB) for answers. Both confirmed that the allegations were taken “very seriously”. According to the associations, “concrete information” about possible misconduct “is available”.

“Both associations will jointly initiate an investigation in which what happened will be examined. External support will also be called in for this investigation. The subject of the investigation will be possible misconduct by trainers but also errors in the competitive sports system at federal bases as well as the handling of possible tips within of the association structures of the STB and DTB,” the “Sportschau” quotes the associations’ statement.

We will probably also have to talk about why this didn’t happen after the “detailed letters” that Tabea Alt said she wrote to the German Gymnastics Federation years ago.