OLY STAR’S TALE OF ABUSE BY TEAM, DR.
Gold medalist Maroney: Forced to compete with broken foot, left naked with convicted perv
Former Team USA gymnast McKayla Maroney was forced to compete with a broken foot and nose at the 2012 London Olympics after Larry Nassar, the team doctor since convicted of sexual abuse, lied about the injuries to her coach, she said in a series of social media posts over the weekend.
The Olympic gold medalist and “Fierce Five” member — one of numerous victims of Nassar — shared the explosive accusations Sunday on Instagram and Twitter to show how much pressure gymnasts go through and “how terrible it’s set up” for athletes competing in the Olympic finals.
“Me competing at the Olympics was literally risking the rest of my gymnastics career,” she said in an Instagram Stories video about the 2012 Games.
Maroney, 25, said she arrived in London that summer after suffering an “exploded” bone in her nose and a “really bad concussion” just two weeks earlier. She was still recovering from the injuries when she landed at the airport and was told by coach Marta Karolyi to start practicing immediately, she said.
“I wasn’t competing beam and she had me get up on the beam after being jet-lagged and do three beam routines,” Maroney recalled.
“That’s when I broke my foot because I was dizzy as hell,” she said. “I felt terrible. I looked at my coach and was like, ‘Really, you’re going to make me get on this thing? Right now? I feel like s—t.’ ”
But breaking her foot would not keep her away from the competition. Nassar allegedly downplayed her injury and told Karolyi it was just “an old break.”
“Larry Nassar lied to Marta, told her it was an old break, then she yelled at me and she was like, ‘Why are you being so dramatic?
This is an old break’ ” said Maroney, who was only 16 at the time.
“It was not an old break. It was a fresh, new, dislocated, shattered sesamoid bone that is her fault, completely,” she said.
Maroney went on to win a gold medal with the team and a silver medal in the individual vault competition.
The California native, who said she’s working on a book detailing her story, blasted the U.S. Olympic Committee and Team USA for failing to protect their athletes from ruthless coaches and a sexual predator doctor.
“USOC was so hands off I didn’t even know I was under their care — Or that the Karolyi camp I trained at every month was an Olympic facility managed by them!!?” she tweeted. “To me It felt more like a gym in the middle of a forest, with limited food supply, and a doctor molesting me twice a day.
“When I was under ‘your care’ in Tokyo [for the 2011 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships] competing for Team USA at 15, and my parents weren’t allowed to stay in my hotel, or see me in person… When I was all alone, naked, with Larry Nassar on top of me for 50min balling. [Whose] fault is that?” she wrote in another tweet.
The stunning accusations come as the U.S. gymnastics team is winning multiple medals in Tokyo, even as its biggest star, Simone Biles, withdraws from most of her competitions to focus on her mental health.
In her posts Sunday, Maroney said she endured a lot more but “suppressed it” for a long time. She eventually came out as one of Nassar’s victims — along with Biles, Aly Raisman and many others — and said the physician molested her “hundreds of times” during her career. Nassar was convicted in 2018 and sentenced to 175 years in prison.
USA Gymnastics did not immediately return a request for comment Monday afternoon.