Far from Home: Boarding as an elite child gymnast

Our latest post is an anonymous account of a former elite-level child gymnast who was made to attend boarding school aged 10 to continue her training. This brave account shares the impacts and lasting trauma that the arrangement had, and the questions she has for British Gymnastics about the practice.  

Once upon a time, I was a happy 10-year-old elite gymnast training with a really great Chinese coach.  Every day, I’d enjoy training and I progressed well with the support of a coach who prioritised my wellbeing and worked with me to overcome any obstacles in my training. My parents could ask any questions and had a good relationship with my coach. I was a quiet child, but my parents could tell if anything was bothering me from my behaviour – a little prying would get the details out of me so that they could support.

Then one day my mum decided that the travelling back and forth to the gym club every evening was too much for her and too disruptive for the whole family. She said she had found a solution that would suit everyone – I had a sports scholarship to a boarding school and off I went in September to board termly.

I can’t explain to you the huge emotional shock boarding termly at 10 years old had. I felt like I didn’t have a family anymore. Six to eight weeks apart feels like a lifetime at that age. I was miserable, constantly missing my parents and siblings, and crying every evening for them. The school had a great ethos and centralised the wellbeing of pupils, but even the best wellbeing programme in the world cannot replace family. I can’t fault the school; I don’t think there was anything more they could have done to replace what I had lost. I also felt very distant from my family when I finally did see them in the school holidays. I would tell them what they wanted to hear; not how miserable I really was. I no longer opened up to my parents about the details of my life away from them.

The gymnastics club was on-site at the school but owned and run separately and hadn’t established the same positive culture as the school. Whilst not rife with abuse, there was an underlying negativity and overly competitive streak in the culture.  There was a time my coach got angry and hit me, which was witnessed by two other gymnasts. It’s no surprise to me now that it was me he chose to hit. Why would he hit the other two girls knowing that they would go straight home an hour later and immediately tell their parents? He knew I wouldn’t see my parents for several weeks, so I was a much easier target for any potential abuse than the kids who saw their parents daily.  He was right, because I didn’t tell my parents, but the two other girls did tell their parents. Immediately.  They told their parents who then told my parents.  My parents asked me about it and then complained to the gym. 

Following that, I was on my own at the gym, dealing with the aftermath of this complaint, again without the support of my parents.  The whole thing culminated in a very intimidating situation for me where I was confronted by the coach and his counterpart on my own and told that I’d ‘misunderstood’ and hadn’t really been hit and I felt they wanted me to agree to that account.  I just stared at them scared, and then it was never mentioned again. Nothing seemed to have been really achieved at all by this complaint, so at this point, I decided that telling my parents about any problems was useless and actually led to more harm and difficult situations for me to deal with on my own. Ultimately, it resulted in even less communication between me and my parents.

I did, however, tell my parents I wanted to leave the boarding school. After a year and a half at the boarding school, my mum found a new solution. This involved me living with my new gym coaches in their home weekly and spending Sunday with my own family. I went to a school local to the gym, trained in the evenings and lived with my coaches during the week.  I went home with my parents on Saturday afternoons after training until school on Monday morning. This seemed to 11-year-old me like a vastly improved situation and so I spent two years in this new arrangement. I felt much more secure having a family unit around me again even if it wasn’t my own family most of the week.  Unfortunately, I’d unwittingly also moved myself into a gymnastics club that was rife with emotional and physical abuse and, once again, my own parents were not around to deter nor lessen the impacts. In addition to the abuse at the gym, we’d now given coaches complete control over my life outside the gym too. I was fed very little and started to hide food and money so that I could get more food. Sometimes I was put on extreme diets – school holidays were particularly scary as I was unable to get food elsewhere.  t still shocks me now how little I was fed during those extreme diets whilst also training long hours each day.

“My long-term wellbeing was repeatedly overlooked for short-term gymnastics gains”

I had injuries that weren’t treated and damaged bones that were never x-rayed because my coaches weren’t big fans of medics because they always told us to rest an injury and that’s not what the coaches wanted to hear. I thought of my coaches as second parents which added a new dimension when I witnessed or was a victim of emotional and physical abuse by them. Ultimately, one day a week wasn’t enough for my parents to protect me from abuse, nor support me emotionally through this very difficult time.

As an elite gymnast at such a young age, I really needed someone by my side whose primary focus was my wellbeing. With the best will in the world, the coaches have a conflict of interest when it comes to deciding things like if a child should compete on an injury or not. Not having my parents around left a gaping hole in decision-making. My long-term wellbeing was repeatedly overlooked for short-term gymnastics gains. Equally, having no adult looking out for me left me vulnerable to abuse by anyone with that inclination. 

And the long-term effects of all this? I have diagnosed trauma stemming from a lack of support from suitable caring adults. Living away from home is a huge contributing factor to this. The trauma leads to flashbacks, where emotionally I return, and sometimes get stuck for weeks, feeling like I did at the worst points in my childhood. Because of all this, the relationship with my parents will always be strained. They weren’t there for me when I needed them as a child and that cannot be changed.  Supporting a child through elite sport is difficult and I don’t have the answer to balancing the needs of the whole family through this.  But know this, an elite gymnast is, without a doubt, dealing with far more complex situations and demands than a child would normally be and that means that an elite gymnast needs their parents more, not less.

As an ex-gymnast who is still dealing the long-term consequences of living away from my parents, I urge British Gymnastics to better research these arrangements, their prevalence within the gymnastics community, and how gymnasts can be better supported in these circumstances; how many gymnasts are living away from their parents? What age are they?  What are the ethical implications? I ask British Gymnastics to introduce specific policies and guidance to better protect these gymnasts and to consider what extra support and monitoring should be offer to gymnasts who find themselves in these circumstances.

Author’s note:  I’ve recently been informed that the arrangement where I lived with my coaches may be considered a private foster care arrangement which is regulated.  If you are considering any kind of arrangement like this, you should seek advice about the legalities and legal obligations.