GymCastic: The Gymnastics Podcast19 Jun 2019

368: No-No-Nunnoisms (Commissioned)

This episode has been commissioned by Club Gym Nerd members The Participation Sisters, who requested an episode called No-No Nunnoisms: The Era of Larger-Than-Life Coaches (and why it needed to end). Disclaimer: We're going to laugh about some of this stuff, and we also know Bela is horrible.

Is Bela Karolyi patient zero for this kind of gymnastics coaching?
Inside the belief that you needed an impassioned man to coach you to Olympic success (barf barf barf barf barf), and then the times when that was (sigh) actually true.
NBC's obsession with Bela Karolyi
- That horrific 1996 fluff piece on Kerri Strug — His defeat? The only man who could make her dreams come true? That boat-rowing methodology? OH HELL NO.
- "Bela's girls"
- Obviously, Spencer can't resist talking about that creep-burger 1995 Moceanu fluff or crazy 1992 articles
Exaggerating the important of coaches by minimizing the athletes as "little girls," even when they're adults
Bela and Nunno and the 1992 Trials war of words
What have we (or should we have) learned from that era about the culture of the sport
Have we come out of the era of larger-than-life coaches?

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