Body shaming in gymnastics, after the athletes’ complaint, Minister Abodi intervenes: “Quick and transparent checks”

While the stars of artistic gymnastics shine at the Liverpool World Cup, in Italy the fuss triggered by the interview released last October 30 to La Repubblica by Nina Corradini, former athlete of the Italian rhythmic national team, has not subsided. The nineteen-year-old Roman revealed that she left the discipline in June 2021 to no longer receive “mental pressure” from the coaches of Federgymnastics, finding herself forced to use laxatives in order not to receive verbal humiliations on her own weight. “Shame on you”, “eat less”, “but how can you look in the mirror?” these are some of the sentences suffered by Corradini that led her to leave the world she fell in love with as a child and her story made public a year and a half later is intended to “protect the youngest girls” from these abuses.

The official reply from Federgymnastics was not long in coming and, in a note released through all available channels, replied as follows: «The FGI does not tolerate any form of abuse and is always alongside all its members. Sport, with gymnastics above all, is respect for the person, a celebration of talent and well-being. Provisions have been made to immediately inform the Federal Prosecutor and the Safeguarding Officer for the investigations and actions of their respective competence ». Then adding at the end of the press release, this appeal: «All gymnasts and gymnasts, technicians and managers are invited to come forward and whoever has information contact the FGI, which will guarantee confidentiality and listening. Only all together can we face these intolerable behaviors and eradicate them from the world of gymnastics which is strong, healthy and has no room for those who do not share the values ​​of sport ».

In the following hours, here are other girls come forward, like the Bolognese Anna Basta who, also in Repubblica, said she even thought about the extreme act of suicide due to body shaming and the extreme demands to be made to her body to stay high level during training at the Federal Academy of Desio. In the last few hours, the Brescia police station also received a complaint from the mother of two sisters, very young gymnasts also in rhythm, who allegedly suffered psychological abuse in the gym by their coaches.

After the interview with Corradini, many now want to make their voices heard, as happened in the United States on the occasion of another scandal, of different magnitude and with the intervention of the FBI, due to sexual abuse in the US National Gymnastics team , also told by the Netflix documentary «Athlete A». Psychological wounds that also left their mark on a champion who seemed unstoppable like Simone Biles, who went from being absolute queen in Rio 2016 with 4 golds and 1 bronze in the shadow of herself five years later in Tokyo (1 silver and 1 bronze) , due to the demons that gripped her on the platform and that led her to take sides in the front line in the following months to prevent the situation from happening again.

On the Italian story, however, all the institutions are moving and, this morning in Rome, there was a meeting between the new Minister of Sport Andrea Abodi, the number one of Coni Giovanni Malagò and the president of Federgymnastics Gherardo Tecchi. «Everything that emerges will have to be evaluated and verified quickly and transparently. I will not go into the technical merits, but the line of rigor and that of trespassing is a fine line. The quality of the technicians serves to mark that border line and if it has been crossed there will be those who will intervene – said Abodi at the end of the meeting -. The size of the sporting phenomenon is important, but for me one bad case is enough and it is as if they were a hundred thousand ».

“Just to clarify, just to check everything immediately but the movement is healthy, serious, the movement is respectful of the rules then if there have been episodes on individual athletes that need to be verified I do not allow myself to give judgments” said the president of Coni , Giovanni Malagò.