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By the time you finish Athlete A—a new Netflix documentary that chronicles the sexual abuse case against former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar—your blood will be boiling. It won’t just be the convicted sex offender fielding your rage, either. You’ll be horrified and disgusted by former U.S. Olympic coaches Bela and Marta Karolyi, former USA Gymnastics president Steve Penny, and the entire culture of elite gymnastics, which sacrificed young girls for the sake of a few hunks of gold.
Directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, Athlete A leaves no room for argument that the entire USA Gymnastics organization was complicit in the Nassar scandal, who was accused by over 130 women of sexual assault and was sentenced to life in prison in 2017. Maggie Nichols, a former USA Olympics gymnast, first told her coach that Larry Nassar was touching her inappropriately during exams in 2015. She was 16 years old, and in second place behind Simone Biles as the best gymnast in the world. In 2016, she was mysteriously left off of the USA Olympics team, despite qualifying for a spot with a higher score than some of the girls who became alternates.
“I try not to think too much about it,” says Nichols in the film, in response to the obvious question: Was she punished by USA Gymnastics for reporting sexual abuse? “I just try to carry on and hope that they made the right decision for the right reasons.”
Nichols was dubbed “Athlete A,” and her then-anonymous reports, along with the Indianapolis Star reporters who investigated Nassar, helped finally bring this long-time sex offender to justice. But, as horrible as that case was and is, what makes Athlete A a great documentary is its ability to go beyond the grimy surface that is Nassar. As Jennifer Sey, a former gymnast and author of the memoir Chalked Up puts it in the film, “There were sexual predators everywhere. But more broadly, emotional and physical abuse was actually the norm and we were all so beaten down by that, and made obedient, that when we knew there was a sexual abuser in our midst, we would never say anything. We felt utterly powerless.”
Directors Cohen and Shenk introduce us to Béla and Martha Károlyi as one of the root causes of this culture. The husband-and-wife duo began coaching gymnastics in Romania in the ’60s and were known for their “strict” methods that won medals for the Eastern bloc countries medals. After they defected to the U.S. in the ’80s, they brought their methods—and their medals—to USA Gymnastics. But what was branded as “strict” was clearly child abuse: Geza Pozsar, a retired Karolyi choreographer interviewed in the film, describes how they controlled the girls’ weight, called them “fat cows,” slapped them, and grabbed them by the neck. He casually discusses screening 6-year-old girls for fear.
The Károlyis, who were still working with USA Gymnastics in 2016, are just one piece of this horrendous puzzle. Why, the documentary asks, are these girls so young in the first place? Sey points out that before Nadia Comaneci won the Olympics at 14 years old in 1976, the U.S. Gymnastics team was made up of adult women. “In other sports, the athletes are adults. They can reasonably make choices about what they want. I don’t think that is true in gymnastics.” And of course, younger girls are much easier to control.
After laying down this groundwork, the doc brings it back to Larry Nassar. It’s all too easy to see why he was able to get away with his crimes for as long as he did. “Larry was the only nice adult,” says Jamie Dantzcher, a former gymnast from the 2000 USA Olympic Team. Nassar gave the girls candy. He snuck them snacks. He made them laugh. And he sexually abused them, over and over and over again.
The most excruciating part of the film is a taped interview with Nassar and Det. Lt. Andrea Munford from the Michigan State University Police, from August 2016. Clearly flustered, he admits on camera to using “intravaginal procedures,” an extremely uncommon physical therapy technique. He tries to explain it away with medical terminology. He insists the detective simply doesn’t understand. Then he admits to getting erections while he performed these procedures. It’s horrifying to listen to.
As satisfying as it is to watch Nassar receive his two 60-year sentences in court, Athlete A asserts that Nassar is just one particularly nasty product of a toxic, abusive culture. The journalists clearly lay out the ways the organization was complicit. Maggie Nichols told her coach that Nassar was abusing her in 2015. Her coach, rather than going to the police, reported it to the Head of Women’s Program, Rhonda Faehn. Faehn took it to USA Gymnastics president Steve Penny, who took it to their lawyers, who hired a third-party organization that investigates sexual harassment in the workplace. It wasn’t until five weeks later that Penny finally took the complaint to the FBI.
Were it not for COVID-19, Athlete A would have come out a month before the 2020 Olympics. Perhaps, now that they’re the 2021 Olympics, there’s more time to do something with the rage it incites. Americans love to win, sure, but what American in their right minds would say a medal is worth all this?
