Abuse debate in German gymnastics
“I noticed what barrel I opened”
January 9, 2025 – 12:06 p.mReading time: 3 minutes
Tabea Alt got the abuse debate in women’s gymnastics rolling when she went public. Now she has spoken out again and is calling for concrete innovations.
With a sensational Instagram post two weeks ago, ex-gymnast Lisa Alt made serious grievances at the Stuttgart gymnastics center public. In it she described serious allegations: “Eating disorders, punishment training, painkillers, threats and humiliation were the order of the day. We were manipulated from an early age in order to be controllable. We were playthings,” wrote Alt.
The reactions didn’t take long to arrive. Several former colleagues from the Stuttgart base spoke up, confirmed Alt’s descriptions and revealed further details. The allegations shed a frightening light on the conditions at the renowned location, which has been considered one of the leading training bases in Germany for years.
Now Alt, who retired from gymnastics in April 2021 at the age of just 21 due to persistent injuries, renewed her allegations. In an interview with “Spiegel” she complains: “We were destroyed, we suffered extremely, but it also made us strong. And we are now putting an incredible amount of energy into processing these experiences from back then.”
After her Instagram post, she “already noticed what a barrel I had opened. We all carry the mental scars. Now it’s about processing, and going public is part of it. I want to prevent this from happening to young girls again what I’ve been through.”
Alt does not believe that the conditions in Stuttgart or at the base in Chemnitz, where similar cases caused a stir in 2020, are isolated cases. “It’s hard to imagine. First and foremost, it’s the women’s gymnastics system. A system that needs renewal.”
The 25-year-old has concrete ideas about what this should look like: “There needs to be a concept in which parents, athletes, doctors and coaches talk and act on the same level. My experiences have shown that in conversations between coaches and… My health situation and my pain, as was known during training, were not truthfully disclosed to doctors or the national coach.
She demands: “This shouldn’t happen anymore. And a lot has to happen in the training and further education of trainers. I’m now studying medicine, and as a doctor you always have to prove further training points in your job. Why shouldn’t the same be true for trainers apply?”
The former top gymnast Janine Berger also spoke out clearly in the course of the abuse debate. She denounced: “It has been clear internally for a long time that there are injustices in German gymnastics. It hurts my soul and at the same time makes me angry to see that many talents continue to be destroyed psychologically and physically and this must finally come to an end . It’s about children.”
That is why she is now calling for external control mechanisms from outside the association. “It doesn’t do me any good to employ any independent people in associations because they are rooted in this structure,” said the fourth-place finisher at the 2012 Olympics on RTL/ntv. “We need someone who can look at it completely from the outside.”
The disclosure of the grievances by several athletes has sparked a broad discussion in the sports world and could have consequences for German gymnastics.