MINNEAPOLIS — Five years ago, USA Gymnastics was in uproar. The massive fallout over the Larry Nassar sex abuse scandal put one of the marquee programs of the U.S. Olympic movement in jeopardy.
Lawsuits. Bankruptcies. Possible decertification. CEOs came and went, unable or unwilling to find a way forward, and sponsorships evaporated.
And perhaps most damagingly, it has eroded trust between the organization and its tens of thousands of members, from the men and women competing at this week’s Olympic trials to the club owners, coaches and parents of kids just getting started.
Before taking over as president and CEO of the embattled national governing body in early 2019, former Michigan gymnast and current NBA executive Lee Lee Leung turned to her longtime coach for guidance.
“He said to me, ‘You have a chance to be part of the biggest turnaround in sports history and you can’t pass it up,'” Leon told The Associated Press. “I thought, ‘That sounds pretty appealing.'”
So is progress.
More than five years after he took over, things are improving. They’re not perfect (as befits a sport where perfection is inherently unattainable), but they’re getting better — legally, financially and, Leon believes, culturally.
This weekend, a packed Target Center will be filled with the logos of the blue-chip corporate partners who fled in the wake of the Nassar revelations. Under a rebranded USA Gymnastics logo, gymnasts hoping to qualify for the Paris Olympics will be competing in what they believe is a much healthier environment than they were in between the 2016 and 2020 Olympics.
Few have seen this deliberate evolution more up close than seven-time Olympic medalist Simone Biles. The 27-year-old superstar publicly identified herself as a victim of Nassar in early 2018 and has never been shy about calling out those in power. Asked recently about where her relationship with USA Gymnastics was going as she seeks her third Olympic Games, Biles struck a more conciliatory tone.
“I think things have changed because a lot of people have changed,” she said. “They’ve taken on roles, they’ve done the work, they’ve put in the effort.”
Entering a “burning building”
Leon wants to be clear: She didn’t set out to hire an all-female executive team, from the chief operating officer to the organization’s first-ever head of athlete wellness, to reflect the makeup of an organization that is 85% female. It just happened to be that way.
As Leon sought to assemble a group that could help pull USA Gymnastics out of its predicament, there were certain qualities she wanted in them — and some she tried to avoid.
“They had absolutely no egos,” Leon says. “I knew that in order for us to do what we needed to do, they needed to understand not just as individuals, but the larger mission, the larger purpose of what we were trying to accomplish.”
Enter people like Stephanie Korepin, who was a member of the U.S. rhythmic gymnastics team in the late 1990s and early 2000s and admitted that when she retired, “I didn’t want anything to do with the sport.”
Korepin earned her MBA and took a corporate job, but realized sports was in her blood: She served as a judge on the side, eventually becoming interim director in 2018, which ultimately led to her current role as chief program director.
“The building was on fire, and if anyone had their eyes wide open, it was me,” she said. “I was on the board. I saw everything that was going on. I saw exactly what the organization was going through.”
Trust through transparency
Korepin remembers feeling “a bit disillusioned” as a member of the national team, a time when he felt decisions were being made in the dark and unexplained, which resulted in “a huge sense of distrust”.
One of her guiding principles is to try to keep things as secret as possible: When the selection committees to choose the men’s and women’s Olympic teams meet this weekend, an independent observer will be in the room and will later provide a detailed report on how the committees chose their members and decided who to leave out.
It’s a process Korepin instituted ahead of the 2020 Olympics and which the organisation follows for all major international missions. There was initial pushback after Korepin said he had PTSD from the organisation being in the spotlight all the time for the wrong reasons, but it has now been embraced.
USA Gymnastics also introduced a new athlete funding model, a performance-based tiered system that provides very specific guidelines for each sport, from women’s artistic gymnastics to non-Olympic sports like double mini-trampoline.
Gone is the mystery of how prize money will be distributed. In its place is a peace of mind that Korepin never had while competing.
“There can be a lot of mental stress with supporting yourself and your family trying to support an elite athlete,” she said. “Knowing that funding is there helps with the mental health of the athletes. I think this system plays a bit of a piece of the puzzle in helping athletes stay in sport for longer because they know what to expect.”
The organization also created a new framework by sharing head responsibilities for the women’s elite program, with 2008 Olympians Chelsea Memmel and Alicia Sacramone Quinn teaming up to lead a five-woman team that will arrive in Paris as heavy gold medal favorites.
Their presence helps in a number of ways: It provides the athletes with a leader who understands better than anyone else what it takes to get to this moment, without creating the impression that there is only one person responsible for decision-making.
“They’ve been through exactly what we’ve been through. They’ve been to world championships, they’ve been to the Olympics,” Biles said. “They’ve had their ups and downs, so I think their leadership has helped (the senior program) grow.”
Support at home and at the arena
Biles brought the importance of mental health to the public’s attention when she withdrew from multiple finals at the 2020 Olympics due to a condition she called “twisties.”
USA Gymnastics has begun setting aside funds as part of sponsorship deals with apparel companies to reimburse national team members and coaches for visits with mental health professionals when they return home.
Leon said interest and participation in the program has been “very good,” adding that it’s important to ensure services are not limited to just athletes.
“Athlete-centricity means supporting the entire ecosystem that supports the athlete,” Leon said, “and supporting the coaches is really important.”
That support can come in many forms and of different types.
USA Gymnastics is making therapy dogs a fixture at major events, spearheaded by golden retriever Beacon, the idea came from Caroline Hunt, vice president of rhythmic gymnastics, who has been an advocate for therapy dogs for years, and Leon, who saw the benefit a therapy dog had on his hospitalized father.
The trickle-down effect was astounding: During the U.S. Championships earlier this month, Beacon was joined by several canine friends, who not only helped the athletes relax, but were also well-received by coaches and judges, lowering overall anxiety levels.
“I’ve seen the most level-headed coaches become gentle around dogs,” Leon said. “It’s actually pretty incredible to see.”
Work remaining
There’s a level of optimism within USA Gymnastics not seen even five years ago, but progress has been slow in some areas.
Leung believes there is now a “culture of reporting” suspected abusive behavior at member gyms, but a lack of funding and staffing at the SafeSport Center — an independent agency that handles abuse allegations from the US Olympic governing bodies — means investigations, if any are made at all, move at a slothful pace.
While elite gymnastics is more diverse than it has ever been, that diversity hasn’t extended to the judging panels, which are heavily skewed toward white men and women. Korepin said expanding the judges pool overall is a “priority,” adding that that starts with strengthening recruitment and education of athletes.
More than a dozen cities have expressed interest in bidding for the training and wellness center, which would serve as a central hub for all national team sports, and it is unclear when, but construction is expected to begin well before the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
While the response has been encouraging, there are potential political landmines: states’ positions on women’s rights will be part of a “decision-making matrix”, but Leong stressed that the focus will be on “the proposal as a whole”.
Iconic Moments
Perhaps the biggest change during Leon’s tenure is that USA Gymnastics headlines have shifted focus from what happens off the field to what happens on the field.
A testament to how far things have come was when Biles left her rotation to support 2020 Olympic gold medalist Sunisa Lee after Li fell on her vault dismount on the final day of the U.S. Championships earlier this month.
Without checking with her coaches for permission, Biles was free to do whatever she felt was needed in the moment, whether that was rushing over to comfort Li or joining him backstage for some pep talk.
Quinn, who helped the U.S. win a silver medal at the 2008 Olympics and is now strategic lead for the senior women’s program, said it’s a reminder that “at the end of the day, these are young women who care about each other.”
It wasn’t always this way.
“It was a sign of weakness to have feelings about other teammates or players wanting me to do well,” said Quinn, who helped the U.S. win a silver medal on the team at the 2008 Olympics. “That’s not the case anymore.”
The scars from the biggest sexual abuse scandal in the history of sports at USA Gymnastics may remain forever, but there is a sense of progress, even though all involved know the work is not yet done.
This project may never be finished, because no environment is too safe, too open or too transparent.
Still, they remain wary of getting ahead of themselves — mistakes have been made before and there will be more — but there are signs that trust that was virtually nonexistent in the organization’s darkest days is returning.
Considering the firestorm Leon and her team were sprinting towards, this was a start.
“I think there’s a belief in the community that our intentions are good,” Leon said. “We’re really trying to do the right thing.”
