USA Gymnastics Cuts Ties With Site of Sexual Abuse

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January 19, 2018 2:14 AM

For many years the Karolyi Ranch in rural Texas was the ultimate way station for elite American gymnasts, a pressure-cooker training center where young women arrived with visions of Olympic glory.

The ranch is no longer a steppingstone to stardom. The national governing body for gymnastics said on Thursday that it would sever ties with the Karolyi Ranch after a groundswell of criticism of the organization this week.

The ranch was one of the places that a team doctor, Dr. Lawrence G. Nassar, had molested gymnasts. Some athletes were dismayed that they would have to return to that scene for national team training.

“It has been my intent to terminate this agreement since I began as president and CEO in December,” Kerry Perry, the president of the organization, USA Gymnastics, said in a statement, without explaining why she had waited until Thursday to announce the decision. “We are exploring alternative sites to host training activities and camps until a permanent location is determined.”

Nassar, who abused gymnasts under the guise of giving them medical treatment, is expected to be sentenced in Michigan on Friday for a guilty plea to seven sexual assault charges.

USA Gymnastics has been under pressure for months to reconsider its use of the training center at the Karolyi Ranch. As of Tuesday night, the federation’s website listed a five-day camp for the national team at the ranch next week, though the listing for the camp was removed by Thursday.

A statement posted Monday on Twitter by Simone Biles, who is regarded as the top American gymnast in history, fueled a fierce backlash against USA Gymnastics for continuing to hold camps at the ranch.

“It breaks my heart even more to think that as I work toward my dream of competing in Tokyo 2020, I will have to continually return to the same training facility where I was abused,” Biles wrote.

“I hope they don’t make any of the girls go back to the ranch,” Aly Raisman, one of Biles’ fellow Olympians, said on ESPN. “No one should have to go back there after so many of us were abused there.”

The ranch is in Huntsville, Texas, about 50 miles north of Houston, in the piney woods of Sam Houston National Forest. In 2001, it was designated as the national training center for U.S. women’s gymnastics, and, in 2011, it was named an Olympic training site.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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