“We’re also no longer routinely weighed and are encouraged to eat properly to aid our performance and recovery. “We are now able to communicate any training-related thoughts and concerns with our national and personal coaches.
LORRAINE DOWNIE SERIES
The Downies are the first current members of the elite GB squad to go public about their experiences, following a series of allegations by former and junior athletes in recent days.īecky Downie said that having found the courage to first raise her concerns with British Gymnastics staff in 2018, she recognised “clear and obvious changes”.ĭownie said: “After my 2018 situation, and deciding to speak up, this sparked a change for the better with regards to programme safety and training personalisation. “After a deep emotional battle, I’ve finally found a place to be happy with my body outside of the gym, but I’ll always feel overweight whenever I’m in a gymnastics setting.” “This never-ending focus on my weight has left deep scars which will never be healed, I suspect. “I can’t emphasise the damage these kind of comments do to young girls like me, whether intended as a joke or not. At one time at this age, again after being told I was too heavy, I was told by a nutritionist to provide food diaries of everything that entered my mouth and send daily pictures of me in my underwear to ensure I wasn’t lying. She described being forced to strip to her underwear, and how on one occasion a coach had joked that he hoped the bag of painkillers she was holding were in fact diet pills.Įllie Downie added: “From 14 years old I’ve been told to diet consistently. She also endured ankle surgery before coming back to win a bronze medal on the vault in Stuttgart, but admitted that despite her success, years of being made to feel “ashamed” about her weight still led to her hiding food from coaches for fear of the consequences if it was found.
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“Just 12 days later, at the European Championships, my ankle broke down yet again a direct consequence of the unsafe training I (had) attempted to bring up less than a fortnight earlier.”īecky Downie has undergone four operations on her ankle, keeping thoughts of retirement at bay to win the first individual world medal of her career when she took silver on the uneven bars.Įllie Downie has been considered one of Britain’s best prospects for an individual Olympic medal since she swept onto the scene by becoming the first Briton to win a major all-around title at the European Championships in Cluj in 2017.
![lorraine downie lorraine downie](https://radaris.com/p/Lorraine/Blanchet/us-map.png)
“I was shot down, called ‘mentally weak’, and told the injury pain levels I was experiencing were in my head. She added: “As recently as 2018, and given I was by this point a very senior athlete, I attempted to speak up at a national camp about what I considered was an unsafe approach to my personal training. “For too long, the health and well-being of young girls has been of secondary importance to a dated, cruel, and – we’d argue – often ineffective culture within women’s gymnastics training.”īecky Downie described how she had been “trained to the point of physical breakdown” on many occasions in her career, adding: “Only in recent years I’ve understood properly the mental impact that’s had upon me.” “While exact experiences obviously vary, we both recognise the environment of fear and mental abuse those before us have described so bravely.
![lorraine downie lorraine downie](https://i.cbc.ca/1.3741265.1472572217!/fileImage/httpImage/image.jpg)
It’s taken years and years to understand and come to terms with it.
![lorraine downie lorraine downie](https://fastly.4sqi.net/img/user/130x130/1BFDMIQ0SLXPH4Q5.jpg)
The pair said: “We certainly didn’t realise how wrong it was at the time. In a joint statement released via their respective social media channels, the pair said they had experienced a litany of historic bullying and abuse, including a focus on weight which Ellie Downie said had “left deep scars which will never be healed”.