USA Gymnastics takes big tumble
USOC aiming to have organization removed as sport’s governing body
The U.S. Olympic Committee said Monday it will seek to remove USA Gymnastics as the sport’s national governing body, potentially sounding the death knell for an organization that has produced Olympic champions and sports legends but has been rocked over the last two years by the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal.
The end of USA Gymnastics as an organization would clear the way for gymnastics clubs and individual gymnasts such as Simone Biles, the four-time all-around world champion whose family owns a gym in Spring, to continue under the banner of a new governing body, presumably with new leadership,
as the 2020 Olympics approach.
“You deserve better,” Sarah Hirshland, CEO of the USOC, wrote in a letter to gymnasts and the gymnastics community.
Hirshland said the USOC will ensure that training and competitions will continue for gymnasts and that the sport “will remain a bedrock for the Olympic community. … We will ensure support for the Olympic hopefuls who may represent us in Tokyo in 2020.”
But as for USA Gymnastics, which has gone through three permanent or acting CEOs and a complete board change in the last year, she said, “We believe the challenges facing the organization are simply more than it is capable of overcoming in its current form.”
‘Nuclear option’
While national governing bodies in taekwondo, team handball and modern pentathlon have been replaced since 2000, the USOC move to revoke USA Gymnastics’ status would be the most significant use of what some refer to as the “nuclear option” embedded in the organization’s bylaws.
Hirshland will appoint a three-member independent hearing panel, including representatives of its board, other governing bodies and athletes, to decide the fate of USA Gymnastics. The group also could surrender its status voluntarily.
USA Gymnastics’ board of directors said in a statement Monday night that it “is carefully reviewing the contents of this letter and is evaluating the best path forward for our athletes, professional members, the organization and staff.”
Monday’s announcement came two days after the world gymnastics championships in Doha,
Qatar, which signal the end of the competitive year. The USA Gymnastics women’s team won the team gold medal in Doha, and individual gymnasts won eight medals, including five by Biles, the four-time 2016 Olympic gold medalist.
Two-time Olympic medalist Jonathan Horton of Houston said the USOC’s notice Monday apparently came as a surprise to members of the board of directors with whom he spoke.
While Horton competed for years under the USA Gymnastics banner, he said, “I don’t care if it goes away. I want a new organization to come in that will provide the means necessary for a new generation to be successful and to be safe.
“They need to wipe the slate clean. There are people involved in USA Gymnastics that I have known since I was a child. But as much as I like them, they are not doing a good job.”
Attorney John Manly, who represents almost 200 young women who were molested by Nassar, said the move is long overdue.
“This didn’t happen because the USOC wanted it,” he said. “It happened because of hundreds of women abused by Larry Nassar used their voices to demand justice and accountability.”
Manly said if the USOC had not acted to remove USA Gymnastics, he expected Congress to step in.
“The message this finally sends is that if you engage in this horrible conduct, you will lose your organization, you will lose your job, and your organization will wind up in bankruptcy,” he said.
Monday’s action has loomed as a possibility since January, when the USOC demanded the resignation of the USOC board of directors in the wake of federal and state cases against Nassar.
The longtime sports doctor was sentenced in January to 175 years in prison for molesting hundreds of gymnasts, including Biles and other Olympic champions, under the guise of medical care.
Attorneys for the women who were assaulted allege the USOC and USA Gymnastics were aware for more than a year of Nassar’s conduct but failed to notify officials at Michigan State University, which employed Nassar, and thus enabled hundreds of more young women to be assaulted.
Since allegations against Nassar first became public in the fall of 2016, the organization has been through three CEOs, including Steve Penny, the federation’s longtime president who
was forced out in 2017; Kerry Perry, who was removed earlier this year; and former Congresswoman Mary Bono, who resigned after only a few days as acting CEO.
Penny faces criminal charges in Walker County alleging that he withheld from investigators documents describing possible crimes committed by Nassar at the Karolyi Ranch in the Sam Houston National Forest, the former women’s national team training site.
Bankruptcy probable
USA Gymnastics was chartered as a corporation in Texas but has its headquarters in Indianapolis. Its most prominent connection to the Houston area for years was its use of the ranch owned by famed coaches Bela and Martha Karolyi as a training center for the women’s team.
However, when Biles and others came forward to say they had been assaulted by Nassar at the ranch, the organization canceled its lease to use the ranch. USA Gymnastics is embroiled in a lawsuit in Walker County filed by the Karolyis in connection with that decision.
Monday’s announcement also increases the probability that USA Gymnastics, potentially bereft of funding from the USOC and
already without sponsors in the wake of the Nassar scandal, likely will be forced to declare bankruptcy.
That would put on hold lawsuits from coast to coast filed against the USOC, USA Gymnastics, Nassar and other defendants.
“Their cash flow is going away, and they have 350 cases pending against them,” Manly said. “It’s obvious they will have to file bankruptcy, and that is what the USOC wants because it stops discovery.”
Also in question is how the sport will be reorganized and athletes funded as the Olympics approach. USA Gymnastics has resident men’s athletes who
train in Colorado Springs, Colo., at the USOC Training Center, but many men’s gymnasts and all the top female gymnasts train at private clubs.
While the new director for the gymnastics governing body is unclear, Manly said his clients, who include 2012 and 2016 gold medalist Aly Raisman, will work to ensure that the current USA Gymnastics leadership has no part in the new order.
“The villains within USA Gymnastics are not going to go away, and they don’t want their culture to go away,” he said. “But these women are not going to let that happen. We will not allow people who allowed hundreds of girls to be molested to continue to be in power.”
2000 Olympic bronze medalist Jamie Dantzscher, who was among the first to file suit against Nassar, said federation officials have been “incapable of providing competent and consistent leadership. … It is time for this organization to be replaced.”
Biles, who has been critical of USA Gymnastics leadership since identifying herself in January as among those abused by Nassar, had no immediate comment.