A few years after she competed in synchronized swimming at the London Olympics, Szofi Kiss from Hungary started working with a coach from Russia, whom she would only identify by her first name as Natalia. The coach, Kiss said, separated some members of her training group in what she called the ‘Chubby Team’, sometimes withholding dinner from them and telling them, ‘You disgust me,’ and ‘I’m sick of looking at you ‘, when the swimmers left the pool after the workout.
Kiss, now 26, described the coach’s tactics as ’emotionally terrorizing’.
Natalia Tarasova, the head coach of the national team during that period, and the only coach named Natalia who suffered in those years in the Hungarian artistic swimming federation’s meeting minutes, did not respond to requests for comment. But elite-synchronized swimmers – mostly women, with few men at elite level – regularly endure bullying, harassment and psychological abuse by male and female coaches, more than 100 current and former athletes from more than a dozen countries said in recent interviews . with The New York Times and other news organizations, and in social media posts and blogs.
With the rescheduling of the Tokyo Olympics approaching in July, swimming, as the sport is now known, is flooded with scandal that has recently erupted in Canada and a handful of other countries in public opinion.
Swimmers interviewed described an unhealthy culture of thinness and disordered eating habits in an event that inevitably fuels tension between art and sport. Artistic impression, appearance and body line are the judges’ score.
“If you are not tall and super-thin – basically if you do not look like a model – with light skin, you have no chance of reaching the highest level,” said Myriam Glez (40), a former US CEO, said. Artistic swimming and a two-time Olympic athlete.
Katie Spada, 28, of the United States, said she was sometimes called a “dying whale” by a former coach and at 13 said to her, “I have boobs like Marilyn Monroe and they were in the way.”
Such remarks “feel very inappropriate and yet are only normalized during practice,” Spada said.
Research, published as a dissertation at UCLA by Alison Williams (31), a former elite artistic swimmer, indicated that nearly two-thirds of U.S. national team members between the 1990s and 2019 who responded to her survey were professionally diagnosed or had self-diagnosis. depression.
“All of the athletes experienced emotional abuse,” Williams wrote.
Kiss’ coach at the 2012 Olympics, a fellow Hungarian named Gábor Szauder, one of the few male coaches at elite level, is now under scrutiny as the national coach for Canada Artistic Swimming. Last fall, he was accused by five swimmers of making sexist remarks, embarrassing athletes weight and committing other worrying behaviors. He has since received similar criticism from swimmers and officials in Slovakia, where he coached from 2013 to 2018 before coaching in Canada.
On Tuesday, five former elite swimmers were prosecuted in Montreal, accusing Canada Artistic Swimming, the national governing body, of failing to provide a safe environment and the abusive behavior of Szauder and former coaches.
Canada Artistic Swimming and Szauder deny wrongdoing. They did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Szauder also did not respond to previous attempts to reach him. Swimming’s world governing body, known as FINA, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit or to several requests to comment on the difficult state of artistic swimming.
The lawsuit – which seeks the status of class action and financial compensation for “moral damages”, reflects an attempt to clean up a sport that wants to change the image after coaches are accused of being athletes in Spain, Mexico, the United States and abused other countries. Swimmers seem increasingly less willing to subject themselves to degrading treatment by coaches, whose behavior is often described in part as a remnant of the tactics used in the former Eastern bloc and in China, another artistic swimming force.
Artistic swimming was introduced at the 1984 Olympic Games and the Russians had the upper hand and have won every team and duet competition since 2000. Many top coaches come from countries that were once in the Soviet sphere. Background checks are not uniform in countries, officials say. Accused coaches often move from country to country with little or no consequences.
Adam Andrasko, the current CEO of US Artistic Swimming, said he accepted the position in 2018, knowing that the sport as a whole should have a different cultural view. ‘The efforts in the United States and elsewhere have included diversity campaigns, nutrition seminars and the development of an athlete charter.
Until recently, artistic swimmers – outstanding athletes who could hold their breath for more than a minute while performing routines – tended to remain silent about abusive treatment of coaches. They climb to the elite level as teenagers and say they often feel powerless to approach officials, who may be more concerned about the results than protecting the athletes. To complain is to risk losing money and a place in the team. But the unwillingness to speak out began to turn into a brave awakening.
Last September, Canada temporarily closed its national artistic swimming training center in Montreal after athletes and club coaches complained about a toxic training environment there. Five swimmers came to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and accused Szauder of making inappropriate sexual remarks and embarrassing athletes about their weight to the point of having panic attacks. He was also accused of making Islamophobic remarks, such as that all Muslims are extremists and told the swimmers that they should learn how to cook and clean for their husbands, otherwise they would not be wanted.
One swimmer who spoke to the CBC, Sion Ormond, 21, is a plaintiff in the lawsuit against Canada Artistic Swimming. Ormond told The Times in an interview that Szauder, unhappy with a warm-up at a 2019 competition in China, told the swimmers: “If we keep swimming like this, he will hit us so hard, we will not know what happened. ”It was later suggested that Szauder intended to hit the swimmers with difficult exercises, but Ormond said she felt physically threatened.
In another incident, Ormond said Szauder told her, “Zion, put on your hoodie before I get too excited.” Szauder has excused such behavior by Canadian officials, Ormond says, as a cultural difference because he is a European. She retired last summer because she found the training atmosphere unbearable.
Last year in October, an independent organization dedicated to safe sports, called ITP Sports, reviewed the accusations of Canadian swimmers. The report contains ‘experiences of psychological abuse, bullying, neglect, sexual harassment, discrimination and an overall culture of fear’.
Before being hired in November 2018 to coach Canada’s national team, Szauder coached Slovakia’s national artistic swimming team for five years. After the Canadian scandal erupted last fall, media reports emerged in Slovakia describing similar complaints there – often ignored by swimming officials – about Szauder’s coaching methods.
Viktoria Reichova, 23, a swimmer who publicly clashed with Szauder after being suspended, told one newspaper that he sometimes referred to Slovak athletes as ‘little pigs’. The parent of another swimmer said that some athletes ate nothing but nuts for days, for fear of being called fat during the weigh-in.
Anton Siekel, president of the Slovak Olympic Committee, told The Times in an email that complaints about Szauder’s “behavior and strange attitude” towards training had been lodged by several parents and swimmers, helping to take the initiative. to provide safe sports. “I am glad that we are no longer afraid to talk about such problems in sport,” Siekel wrote. “Harassment, intolerance and violence have no place in sport.”
Some current and former swimmers continue to support Szauder. Kiss, the Hungarian swimmer who was coached by Szauder during her teens, said she did not experience any of the behavior that the Canadian swimmers claimed. She said Szauder was a father figure who elevated her career to Olympic status and described his coaching style as ‘completely normal’.
Canadian artistic swimmers have made it clear that abusive behavior by coaches and body shaming began before Szauder became head coach of the national team. An Instagram account, @mental_abuse_nac, was recently created for athletes to share their concerns. More than 50 responded anonymously.
Gabriella Brisson, 27, a plaintiff in the current lawsuit, said in an interview that a former Canadian national coach once suggested she go to Africa to lose weight.
Geneviève Peel, 26, a medical student and former Canadian elite swimmer, wrote a series of blog posts in October describing the despair that left her sitting on the edge of chairs, thinning her thighs and counting the exact number of almonds for a snack and developed an “overwhelming” fear of gaining a single pound.
Eventually, Peel wrote, she developed an acute generalized anxiety disorder that required three trips to the emergency room in an ambulance, psychotherapy, and medication she was still using. “Synchro taught me that I could never be enough”, to “hate my body” and that “my common sense was less important than my actions”, she wrote.
More than 50 artistic swimmers from 16 countries were interviewed by The Times. Some said they were pushed into awkward stretching positions, such as splitting, until they cried. Spada, from the United States, said that at the age of 13, she was pushed so hard by a coach once that she needed hip surgery.
Spoons, scissors and other metal objects used as typing devices for swimmers to hear underwater are sometimes thrown at athletes by upset coaches. Swimmers sometimes have sticks to fry marshmallows during the workout on the back of their legs. The skewers can sting if the legs are not kept straight during exercise routines.
Olivia Zhang, 30, who had previously competed for the Chinese national team, said her coach used a metal bar to hit her knee when her leg was not completely ripped out of the water and left a scar. “Every time I look at it, it just brings back unpleasant memories,” Zhang said.
Teresa Ixchel Alonso Garcia, 24, who competed for the Mexican national team for 12 years, said she was hospitalized in 2019 for internal bleeding related to swimming stress but put under pressure by her coach.
“Many times I could have collapsed then, but from the look on her face I could see that it did not matter to her at all,” Alonso Garcia said of her coach.
Anastasia Gloushkov Leventhal (35) competed in four Olympic Games for Israel. Her mother, who hails from Moscow, coached her and their relationship remained strong. But Gloushkov Leventhal said she realizes that athletes from other countries often do not have the same satisfying experience.
“You do not want to give up this golden dream,” Gloushkov Leventhal said, “but at what cost?”
Miroslava Germanová reported from Bratislava, Slovakia. Susan Beachy contributed research.