The first time I realized I was being abused was when I had to withdraw for injury. I was 13 years old. It was my fifth year of club gymnastics. I was reproducing a figure on the carpet when, suddenly, a big “crack”. Horrible pain in the foot. But I don’t stop and I repeat the same movement three or four times in a row to see if I really hurt. Training is not over. The coach watches. But I’m in so much pain that I have to stop. Head to the emergency room. Verdict: my left toe is broken. I was put in a cast and never came back to the club again.
I spent my childhood in the countryside, I was always outside riding my bike or building cabins. My mother is a PE teacher and a former sportswoman, she has always wanted me, my sister and my brothers to play sports. She keeps telling us that it’s good for our health, that we meet people there. When I was 8, a friend persuaded me to join the gym in my town. When I entered the room, I was very impressed: the group of experienced girls did somersaults on the beam, twists on the ground. I have stars in my eyes.
After a year of leisure rhythm, I join the competition group. The trainer has a little control over the club, the training sessions, and manages all the competition part. He’s a real tyrant, all the girls are afraid of him. Her appearance reinforces her posture: she has very dark hair, pulled in a bun, diaphanous skin and always wears black clothes. During the five years of training that we spent together, I never laughed once with her. I find it almost weird when she approaches, smiling. Where is the trap ?
“Some end up in tears”
At each class, we do reinforcement sessions. Sheathing for two minutes, then three… You always have to do more. To increase the difficulty, the teacher decides to sit on our backs during the exercise. She raises her legs and puts all her weight as an adult woman on our young adolescent bodies. If one of us gives up, we all have to do a new series. Sometimes she also has fun placing a twenty-kilo springboard on our backs.
I never talk about the coach or training with my parents. Yet they know what is going on. Classes always end late, they are waiting for us behind the gymnasium window. Each session ends in the same way: the coach lines us up in an onion row, by size, on the floor, our training mat. She settles on the beam, overhanging. Then she knocks us out one by one. More than once, some end up in tears. It’s very humiliating.
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