A clip from 1992, five years before Simone Biles was born, explains exactly how American gymnastics became a cesspool of corruption hell-bent on protecting a serial predator like Larry Nassar. The clip from that year’s Sudafed Skating and Gymnastics Spectacular illustrates how the horrifying congressional testimony of Biles and other Nassar survivors connects directly to the evils of communist Romania.
The clip begins with Bob Costas interviewing Nadia Comaneci, who earned the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics just 15 years before. This rosy, curvy, and beaming adult Nadia looks nothing like the 14-year-old so emaciated that you could see her ribs through her leotard as she dominated the 1976 Olympics. Unlike the old Nadia, whose face was set in a stony glare under black straight bangs unless she had a pasted-on performance smile, this Nadia laughs and smiles with ease.
“I remember I did 20 or 30 routines a day, but Bela told us always to say that we only train three hours, [which] was not true,” Nadia tells Bob Costas with a cheeky grin. “We trained seven or eight hours a day.”
When Costas notes the Romanian government has them lie to avoid charges of child exploitation, Nadia concurs with a laugh.
Nadia then catches up with her old coach, Bela Karolyi.
The gymnastics world has long maintained Karolyi creates champions. But in truth, Nadia created Bela Karolyi. Without Nadia becoming a global sensation in the First World, Bela and his wife Marta would have never been able to defect from Romania in 1981 and immediately join the gymnastics establishment of America.
Gymnasts immediately flocked to “Nadia’s coach,” including Mary Lou Retton, who became the first U.S. woman to win the all-around gold at the 1984 Olympics. That win also marked the non-Eastern European all-around champion, ending an era of Soviet dominance in the sport and finally allowing Karolyi to buy his eponymous ranch that would remain an official USA Gymnastics training center for 17 years. It’s at the isolated and ill-supervised Karolyi Ranch where the clip continues.
Nearly a decade into heralding U.S. dominance, Bela gets to boast to both Nadia and Bob Costas of his new rising stars. Before Nadia, women’s gymnastics was a women’s sport stateside, but the Karolyis exported East Bloc training and aesthetics. The girls flipping and flying in the air are about as tiny and doll-like as Nadia was in Montreal. After all, Betty Okino, the first of Bela’s girls to show off for Comaneci and Costas on camera with a triple pirouette on the balance beam, would tell journalist Joan Ryan just three years later that the Karolyis would limit their diets to fewer than 1,000 calories per day while training.
Of course they’re tiny. They’re starving.
Bela brings Nadia to the floor, which he brags is “soft” and “springy” compared to the floor of their Romanian gym. Kim Zmeskal — who would go on to the Olympics later that year at just 80 pounds and 4 feet, 7 inches — performs for them.
Nadia then joins the girls for tumbling passes. After a surprisingly agile Nadia goes Kerri Strug, whom Bela would force to perform a vault on a single foot after spraining the other at the 1996 Olympics. While beckoning Strug to smile, Bela would carry her off the floor and then pass her to none other than Nassar.
Strug is followed by Hilary Grivich. Whatever secrets she has of the Karolyis are buried with her, as she’d die of a car crash eight years after this filming.
Bela then tells Nadia to do a double back, something she protests she hadn’t done in over a decade. Nadia being Nadia, she succeeds in doing it and smiles at the camera.
“See, Bob!” Nadia cheers.”Things never change. Bela can still talk me into doing anything!
And scene.
Bela and Marta’s success in capitalizing on Nadia’s raw talent to dominate gymnastics for nearly half a century and a predator like Nassar could only thrive in an ecosystem as secretive and severe as Karolyi Ranch. Aside from the smiles and the performance for Costas, there’s little material difference between the starving nymphets being overworked in Texas by Karolyi than those in Romania.
Nassar would never rat out the behavior of the Karolyis. In return, the Karolyis would turn a blind eye toward Nassar. The girls, terrified of being expendable to the sport and berated by the Karolyis, wouldn’t just tolerate Nassar. He would cultivate their loyalty by exploiting the Karolyi abuse, secretly gifting the girls sweets and bread and drinks when they were deprived of basic nutrients and water.
From the first victim to Wednesday’s testimony, the tragedy of Larry Nassar’s reign of terror should have never been allowed to happen because the unique cruelties of the Karolyis should have never be allowed to happen. Even if every extremely dubious denial they knew of Nassar’s predation is true, their training still bordered on child abuse.
Dominique Moceanu should have never had to come forward in 2008 about being starved and made to compete while injured by the Karolyi regime. USA Gymnastics and the United States Olympic Committee should have investigated and fired the Karolyis after reading the reporting published by the aforementioned Ryan in her book Little Girls in Pretty Boxes, which printed in 1995 exactly how the Karolyis forced girls suffering from starvation, eating disorders, and injuries to compete and train.
Biles and hundreds of her peers should have never had to suffer abuse — not just the sexual nature of Nassar but also the emotional and physical abuse by the Karolyis. Not just because Moceanu or Ryan’s disclosures but also because of the countless other people who came forward solely about the Karolyis before the name “Nassar” was burned in our national consciousness.
It took some time after the fall of communism, but in 2002, one of Karolyi’s Romanian gymnasts publicly claimed the Karolyis starved, dehydrated, drugged, and physically beat her and her teammates. In 2008, another talked about how the couple beat her. Hell, even though Nadia has maintained she was never abused by the Karolyis, allegations they did have repeatedly popped up for decades.
It is believed that Nassar, thankfully now rotting in prison for life, did not begin abusing the girls of USAG until the late 90s. The next investigation Nassar survivors deserve and that the nation needs is just how law enforcement, including the FBI under James Comey, botched the Nassar crisis so horribly. But it was perfectly clear for years just how a predator could come to thrive under the Karolyis.
