Weekend Edition: Has British Gymnastics cleaned up its act? - The Sports Agents

0:02Joseph Carr:This is a Global Player original podcast.

0:05Mark Chapman:British gymnastics has been on a journey of root and branch reform since the damning White Review exposed systematic abuse and cultural failings a couple of years ago.

0:15Gabby Logan:On the eve of the start of the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, we'll ask on this pod if the sport has been making enough progress.

0:23Mark Chapman:Is gymnastics here at home safe or are there still cracks beneath the surface?

0:27Gabby Logan:Welcome to the Sports Agents.

0:37Joseph Carr:the sports agents with gabby logan and mark chapman

0:43Gabby Logan:well joseph carr is with a senior associate in the abuse team at bolt burden kemp joseph thank you very much for for joining us we mentioned in the intro the white review which was a couple of years ago and that found systematic physical and emotional abuse in British gymnastics so when you are looking after these clients or have looked after these clients abuse can cover so many different areas when you hear that word what were the severe cases of abuse here what what

1:18Joseph Carr:is the main complaint about the sport when I think about my clients the types of abuse that they've suffered i mean i represent clients who've suffered abuse in all different sports and different institutions but when it comes to british gymnastics we're looking at sexual abuse weight shaming inappropriate weight management techniques really we're looking at training on injuries really hostile emotional cultures where no one's allowed to speak out about what's happened got physical abuse you know simply being being hit all of the racial abuse you know it covers such a wide range and you know my clients they go back some of them were gymnasts in the late 70s some of them were gymnasts very recently and are still children so there has there's been this sort of massive outpouring and disclosures that started in 2020 because all of this has been hidden in gymnastics for so long.

2:17Mark Chapman:It did feel though, didn't it? Like it was something that kind of escalated through the 2000s. And I think at a time when gymnastics was more successful in this country than it ever has been, it took to the 2008 Olympics for us to win our first Olympic medal. I mean, there was one in the 1900s, but proper kind of Olympic era. And the national lottery obviously contributed to much more professionalism in terms of training. And therein lay a kind of paradox because there was this pressure to kind of get return on the investment and also adopting practices from those countries that had previously been successful namely eastern europe which had these kinds of practices or i'm not saying sexual abuse but the terms of in terms of the kind of weight management in terms of the discipline in terms of training on injuries that was very much their kind of you know way of their regime yeah and you can see that

3:06Joseph Carr:culture was imported you know for me that goes further back than the early 2000s that was starting in the 80s but um i feel like it really did escalate and escalate and there's been so many different coaches involved so many different clubs involved that it's very hard to generalize about one particular area but it's it's been a massive problem and i would say because you have these very well respected coaches who uh have absolute positions of power and authority over very young children often it's very hard for them to push back there hasn't been an independent place that they can make disclosures to there haven't been independent welfare officers you know throughout that 50 year period that obviously is is now and for me that was all bubbling and bubbling and bubbling and it wasn't until really sort of the athlete a documentary that came out about abuse in American gymnastics, that it all came to the surface and we got those people suddenly feeling emboldened to disclose what happened to them in 2020.

4:11Joseph Carr:And, you know, during the summer of 2020, there were suddenly hundreds of complaints that had, you know, the experiences had already happened, but only then did people feel actually now they might be able to make some change by speaking out. And I'm really glad they did.

4:25Gabby Logan:As you say, some cases go back to the 70s. So we're talking 50 years ago and we're now in 2025. What issues do you think still remain?

4:35Joseph Carr:Okay, I want to give some credit to British Gymnastics for the things that have improved. There has been like a new leadership team. They've had new safeguarding policies, new safeguarding procedures. They've revamped the complaints process. They really have tried to change the focus of the culture away from what was a coach-led culture of fear to now focusing on athlete well-being. So when the White Review happened, British Gymnastics also set up these independent complaints processes run not by British Gymnastics and had their own complaint processes going on alongside that. And those complaint processes have been a bit of a mess from start to finish.

5:20Joseph Carr:There has been real troubles with sort of getting buy-in into those processes right from the beginning because i think a lot of athletes didn't feel they could trust the process and that kind of rolled into itself because the process became so labyrinthine and bureaucratic and unclear that even more people lost faith in those processes people stopped wanting to engage in those processes so when some of those processes ended these complaints processes they hadn't taken on board half of the complaints because people dropped out I mean I can go into examples of the types of problems that they faced but it means you know really we're still five years after those complaints were made some of them still haven't been resolved and some haven't been looked at.

6:07Mark Chapman:And have there been new complaints post the white report is there because obviously one of the things I think as somebody who lived the experience of being a gymnast and competing for Great Britain and working under the British Gymnastics Association would want to know is that young kids coming into the sport now are in a safe space so post the white report and you know the the actions that were recommended have you had anybody come forwards to say they're not working is the sport cleaning it's added up i think to a large extent

6:36Joseph Carr:it is i think you know from the top the policies have changed that's good but are they being implemented on a day-to-day basis in sort of you know the the less elite clubs i think there's still a big gap in the safeguarding problems there i think it still relies very heavily on you know disclosures being made by you know children or other coaches who are concerned and i think it needs to be treated like a school you know more spot checks to check what the culture actually is there and that everyone feels comfortable to raise an issue because if you don't feel comfortable raising the low level issues then when it gets to a big issue if the culture is that no one's raising any issues it's even harder for me the complaint process needs to be revamped it needs to be you know started from scratch really because that has just been a bit of a disaster and both coaches and athletes i think have have lost trust in that process and it needs to have transparency.

7:38Joseph Carr:So at the moment, we've had all of these independent complaints processes going on, but the only people who know the outcomes are those actually involved in the complaints. So there hasn't been like a publishing of the names of coaches and what their sanctions were. I don't understand why there hasn't been, because if you look at, for example, in schools, you've got the Teachers Regulation Authority. Whenever they have a sort of a safeguarding investigation or looking at a disciplinary investigation, they publish the findings. whether that's the complaint is upheld or not and it's obviously anonymized for the complaints but i think it's important that people can know what the complaints are which clubs are getting those complaints and that they're being treated properly when you talk about the clubs there the situation

8:21Gabby Logan:must be very complicated because you've talked about low-level complaints and obviously i think we would all recognize what the high-level complaints are when i go back to the original question of abuse and then does it depend on clubs and whether they are elite whether it's recreational i.e if we go back to and i don't want to sort of trivialize some of the complaints but if we go back to weight management for example is that something that has to be taken into account if you are training elite athletes compared to a recreational level do you see what i mean in that there are there are so many different levels here yeah and there are different expectations

8:59Joseph Carr:at different levels but what was missing you know the white review pointed it out was that there was very little guidance for what is an appropriate weight management technique and it's so easy for that to translate into something really harmful you know you've got teenagers who are under immense pressure about how they look whether you're a gymnast or not we should just say as well mark

9:19Mark Chapman:that we did ask the british gymnastics association to give their side of this and where they're at and so far we've had no response but if we do get response we will put it in the show notes so because obviously for them I imagine this is also very expensive and you know very time consuming and it's you know what they want to do is be giving as much of a platform as possible to young kids around the country to do the sport but also at the top end they want to be winning gold medals the world championships is on at the moment and it's about to start and we've had a really good run over the last 20 years or so in terms of achieving at that level and that then is what sends little kids when they see it on the tv kind of running to their local gymnastics club which not all of them are going to become Olympians or world champions, but should be a good foundation for so many sports and for their own fitness.

10:02Joseph Carr:Yeah, this should be a really positive thing for kids. This should be a great place for people to go, have fun, compete, learn all of the things that you need to become an athlete if you can be. I think it's good that we've had this reckoning. You know, British gymnastics need to work really hard. They have been working hard. They need to keep working hard to rebuild that trust with gymnasts and the ex-gymnasts. it's going to be a trial and error and British gymnastics are putting that in place now but it's also about making sure that that framework is enforced and that coaches are held accountable when they deviate from that framework and that the coaches themselves need to know what's not acceptable what constitutes a bit.

10:42Mark Chapman:What are your clients looking for are they looking for some financial compensation are they are they just wanting to contribute to what they hope will be a revolution in the way the sport operates?

10:50Joseph Carr:Yeah I think if you ask them almost all All of them say they just want to make things better for the next generation and they want to hold British gymnastics accountable for what they went through. If they could be assured that this couldn't happen again, I think they'd be happy.

11:06Gabby Logan:The Sports Agents.

11:11Joseph Carr:The Sports Agents.

11:12Gabby Logan:With Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman.

11:17Mark Chapman:Well Mark we mentioned during our interview with Joseph that British Gymnastics have been asked to give their side of this and where they're at and we should just say as well they did put a report out in the summer saying ultimately that there is still work to be done they are fully aware of that and it does feel there is so much good in gymnastics that you would want kids to get from it and you'd still want it to be attractive for young children to go and you know achieve all those physical kind of strengths and physical skills that you get from gymnastics. I speak to so many athletes who started in gymnastics, like Jessica Ellis Hill, for one.

11:50Mark Chapman:And it's a really good foundation. And so the elite level is so specialist that it feels like where it's gone wrong a little bit is everybody trying to be elite.

12:00Gabby Logan:Well, yeah. And it's one of those Olympic sports that is funded, has targets, and is probably trying to put a framework in place that satisfies the demands at the elite level and satisfies that requirement to turn out people who can win medals because that is linked to the funding, but also put a framework in place that helps the more recreational side and protects everybody from right up there to right down there. And I can't imagine that that is a particularly easy thing to do for them And it will take time, as they themselves have said. Whilst also the people currently trying to do that, dealing with the historical stuff as well.

12:56It's, I would imagine, quite a difficult landscape to navigate.

13:02Mark Chapman:Yeah, absolutely. It's going to take time. But because we don't give kids physical literacy anymore at school in terms of doing the bagger badges and, you know, kids just don't have to do all of that stuff that we did as kids, you know, walking along the beam as in the upturned benches that you used to do and forward rolls and learning how to climb ropes. You know, that physical literacy is so important and it would be such a shame if kids are lost from the sport because of the concerns that parents might have. After the break, we'll reflect on what's been a varied week on the sports agents.

13:32Joseph Carr:The Sports Agents.

13:37Gabby Logan:The Sports Agents.

13:39Joseph Carr:With Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman.

13:43Gabby Logan:So we talk sumo, which we've never done on The Sports Agents before, nearly two years into the podcast, never done sumo. So we had nine-time British heavyweight sumo champion, Mandeep Singh Koundy, and head of programming at the Royal Albert Hall, who are putting this on this week, Dave Gamble. We've got a whole new catering team in for backstage to cook the vast amounts of rice and noodles and all of the things that they're eating. So they take on a lot of calories each day. We've had to reinforce parts of the building because our normal chairs that we have, say, have a load capacity that is, they will break.

14:22Gabby Logan:If the sumo wrestlers sit on them, I think the heaviest wrestler is the Yokozuna who is 190 kilos. It's quite incredible how heavy he is. And last night we had a 60 kilo weight difference in one of the fights. Wow. How much? 60. 60 kilo weight difference. 60 kilos. 60 kilos. Oh my God. Yeah, it's a whole person. Yeah. Did the big guy win? Most of the big guys won, but we did have one kind of David Goliath situation, yeah.

14:50Mark Chapman:And earlier in the week, we spoke to Andy Farrell, Ireland head coach, head coach of the British and Irish Lions tour to Australia in the summer as well, that successful tour. About all kinds. I mean, we had a challenge, didn't we, Chappas, at the very beginning. We wanted to make him giggle. I don't think we found that too hard, actually. He laughed loads.

15:07Gabby Logan:Laughed loads. Not necessarily where we thought he might laugh, but he still laughed loads.

15:12Mark Chapman:Atta's not with us. Yeah, that's exactly. Talked about him moving from the north to the south, changing codes. And, of course, inevitably it came up that at 16 years old, he gave birth to, his wife, partner, gave birth to a future England rugby captain.

15:27Gabby Logan:Having a son when you were so young, forget the coach player thing, just a father-son relationship when there is only 16 years between you. My son's 22 and I'm 52 and I love the relationship I have with him. I adore it. I adore the adult relationship and talking sport and having a beer and so on and so forth. But there's still a big age gap between the two of us. Well, it's brilliant. We tend to like the same things as well. Tend to disagree and argue and bicker like mates would do along the way until he realises he's talking to his dad, so we put him into place, et cetera. But it is father and son, and we talk and we catch up on that basis alone without the rugby all the time.