"It's a Culture of Abuse of All Kinds"

"First of all, unlike any other Olympic sport or any sport I can think of in which these athletes are training to be the best in the world, you're dealing with children. In men's gymnastics, these guys are adults. They've gone through puberty. They're usually not on the Olympic team until after they've gone to college or are in college. That's not true for female gymnastics, so that's number one. They’re children.
"Number two, they have a small window of opportunity to be the best in the world, often before they hit puberty. In the United States, it's a culture that has been so influenced by Eastern Europe, really because of Bela Karolyi. He came over here after Nadia Comaneci, and he brought his system with him, which was a system of abuse. His job, and he says this, his job was to create gymnasts, not to create healthy young women. And other coaches followed his lead, American coaches followed his lead, because frankly it worked. He did create great gymnasts.
"Of course, we didn't see all the bodies of the girls who didn't make it. He would berate, belittle them, throw them out of the gym, call them fat, call them lazy, call them weak, and if parents didn't like it, he'd say, 'Go ahead. Take your daughter, take her someplace else.'"

Isaac Chotiner at Slate interviews Joan Ryan, author of the 1995 book Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters.