Not just gymnastics, a child’s unhappiness will never be worth a medal

We read about abuse, physical and psychological violence, the ethics of sacrifice taken to the extreme, and serious consequences: the pandora’s box uncovered in the world of “butterflies” of rhythmic gymnastics reveals a reality that many knew, but no one had the courage to bring to light.

It is necessary to be guaranteed, because every fact will have to be verified, to avoid ruining reputations and existences, perhaps only for the revenge of someone who did not make it.

Is it possible nobody knew anything in this micro-cosmos that is the world of sport?

Competitive sport has always lived in the balance between the humanity of sacrifice and the inhumanity of overcoming all limits, especially in some disciplines; but hearing the voices of the athletes, the testimonies, the background, was raw and unsettling.

Does it only happen in rhythm? Obviously not. Are they isolated cases? Maybe, but so striking that they cannot be unknown to the environment in which they matured. Is it solely the fault of “unscrupulous” coaches and coaches? No, and this is the aspect on which it is necessary to reflect and deepen.

There are so many parents who pour out their aspirations, which have become frustrations, on their children; the same parents, unfortunately, who show up at the gym to plead the cause of their son or daughter in the odor of excellence, those who ration food, put their studies in the background, exalt the perverse ethics of success “at any cost” . Or those who lock up their sons and daughters little more than adolescents for very long periods in inadequate sports centers, without worrying that the structures have the means and tools to make children live their age even outside of training hours.

In this squalid climate of “consensus” deviant behaviors proliferate and coaches become monsters, letting the pedagogical and educational role that should guide them evaporate. And boys and girls, especially the latter, cancel each other out, in body and mind, to re-enter that infinitesimal percentage of aspiring champions who then manage to gird their heads with laurel.

Sport, in its competitive declination, deprived of the only real reason why it is worth making sacrifices: joy, a smile, feeling good about yourself, happiness.

Of course, taking the concept to extremes or making specific behaviors a paradigm of entire movements is of no use to anyone and will not serve to improve sport; yet perhaps this earthquake was needed to understand how much and how the system should react and recover the very reasons for its existence, in which sacrifice cannot and must not aim at success at any cost.

Sports managers rediscover, with the help of the Federations, the function and the ethical and psychological training of the technicians, constantly monitor their methods and results, make the psychological and nutritional support of athletes mandatory, without leaving incompetence and improvisation the task of ruining young lives.

Success, where there is talent, will come the same, without sharing it with anorexia, bulimia, amenorrhea or chronic depression.

The real sport should train healthy people and direct them towards healthy lifestyles, or represent a natural medicine, both preventive and subsequent.

And instead the degenerations of exasperated competition are comparable to the most serious cases of doping and should be severely repressed, as in the sensational cases of doped athletes; punishing with the utmost rigor those who committed these acts and those who made them possible and guaranteeing athletes to be able to get out of them, to rediscover the beauty of sport, the healthy aesthetics of sacrifice, love for oneself, which passes from respect for your body. Unhappiness, no, is not worth a medal.