There’s Some Major Info About Bela And Martha Karolyi Missing From HBO’s New USA Gymnastics Doc
HBO's new USA Gymnastics documentary, At The Heart of Gold, focuses on former team doctor Larry Nassar's sexual abuse of young gymnasts.
Some of the abuse occurred at Martha and Bela Karolyi's ranch and other locations, but the doc doesn't touch on what happened to the Karolyis after the scandal broke.
Martha and Bela Karolyi currently claim they knew nothing of Nassar's abuse and are in a lawsuit with USA Gymnastics.
Over the last three years, fans of the USA women's gymnastics team have seen how former team doctor Larry Nassar's sexual abuse scandal has seemingly plagued the sport.
More than 300 women, including Olympians such as Aly Raisman, McKayla Maroney, and Simone Biles, accused Nassar of sexually abusing them as children by putting his fingers in their vaginas under the guise of medical "treatments," per the Chicago Tribune-and more than 150 of those women confronted him during his trial.
Much of the scandal has been focused on where the abuse took place-and who there allowed this abuse to happen for years on end. One such place is in rural Texas at a ranch-turned-training center owned by Martha and Bela Karolyi, a Romanian couple who coached dozens of elite gymnasts for decades.
Now that the HBO documentary At The Heart Of Gold: Inside The USA Gymnastics Scandal has given the sexual assault survivors a new voice, it also sheds a new light on the adults who were responsible for keeping them safe. Still, it doesn't explain everything, leaving viewers to wonder: where are the Karolyis, both 76, now? And how much, if anything, did they really know about Nassar?
Here's what you need to know about the couple and their ranch and training camp:
The Karolyis were a gymnastics power couple.
After emigrating from Romania to the United States in 1981, Martha and Bela Karolyi worked a series of menial jobs before landed coaching jobs in Oklahoma, according to ABC 7 News.
Soon after, Karolyi began coaching at a private gym in Houston, and a year later, convinced the club's owner to sell him the gym. The couple turned it into Karolyi's World of Gymnastics, setting their foundation to become the most powerful couple in US gymnastics history.
Over a decade later, in 1996 at the Atlanta Olympics, Karolyi led the U.S. women's gymnastics team to its first gold medal. He was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame a year later. Throughout his 30 years of coaching, Karolyi produced 28 Olympians, nine Olympic champions, 15 world champions, 12 European champions, and six U.S. national champions from both Romania and the United States.
In 2000, he and Martha were inducted into the USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame, and the couple are also members of the Texas Hall of Fame.
The Karolyi ranch was incredibly isolating.
The Karolyis initially built the forest-based ranch as a family escape before converting a barn into a large gymnasium where future Olympic athletes would train. From 2001 to 2017, the Karolyi ranch was the designated national team training center for gymnastics, but it often didn't feel like that to the elite gymnasts and coaches. "It wasn’t the national team training camp; it was the black hole. All of us disliked it," said Jack Carter, who accompanied McKayla Maroney to the training camps ahead of the 2000 Olympic games in an interview with Deadspin.
The only way for the girls to reach their parents while at the ranch was by using one of two pay phones. And even once cell phones became common, they weren’t useful since it was almost impossible to get service. "You can go in and there’s not getting out. You can’t escape the place. I think that’s problematic," Carter added. "All the environment did, it enabled Dr. Nassar." Eventually though, the Karolyis updated their ranch and provided Wi-Fi to the gymnasts.
The Karolyis were known to be harsh coaches.
Several of the gymnasts who trained with them have expressed fearing the Karolyis' criticism if they ever made a mistake. "Nobody wanted to be the one who was difficult," Aly Raisman told The Washington Post. But while one Karolyi champion, Dominique Moceanu, said the coaches were abusive, another Mary Lou Retton, sang their praises, according to the publication.
Many gymnasts have even gone as far as to say the Karolyis inflicted emotional abuse or encouraged them to restrict their eating, NBC News reported. It didn't help that the food was, in the words of former national gymnastics team trainer, Melanie Seaman, to The Washington Post, "really, really, really awful" and that, as Raisman says, "everyone felt they were being fully watched" with each bite.
Aly Raisman has become an outspoken advocate against abuse in USA Gymnastics:
The Karolyis claim to have been unaware of the abuse that took place at the ranch.
In depositions for a 2017 civil lawsuit, Martha was asked if she knew the details of the inappropriate treatments Nassar gave the gymnasts. She replied that she "never questioned his therapies" and simply saw him doing "some manipulations with arms and things like that."
She also claimed she had no idea any abuse had possibly taken place at all until she received a call from then USA Gymnastics president Steve Penny in 2015 (he resigned on March 16, 2017 after the scandal broke). Bela, meanwhile, has also denied having any knowledge of abuse, saying he had minimal involvement with coaches and athletes since his retirement in 2001, per CNN.
Still, it's a known fact that Nassar or other trainers would treat gymnasts in their ranch dorm rooms at night after "most of the coaches would just leave," according to Seaman. "The fact that Nassar was fine working on us on our beds without a table, that 100 percent should’ve been a red flag to USA Gymnastics," Raisman told The Washington Post.
The Karolyis cut ties with USA Gymnastics in 2018.
The couple were seemingly on top of the world after the U.S. women's gymnastics team took home nine medals in the 2016 Rio Olympics. With that, they were planning to leave the sport on a high note, with plans to retire and sell their ranch to USA Gymnastics so future generations of elite gymnasts could train there.
Instead, USA Gymnastics terminated its agreement with the Karolyi Ranch in January 2018 after Nassar was sentenced, per a press release from USA Gymnastics CEO and president Kerry Perry.
The Karolyis are currently embroiled in a lawsuit related to the canceled sale.
After USA Gymnastics canceled the sale of the ranch, the Karolyis sued the organization and the U.S. Olympic Committee in Texas, seeking lost damages and claiming no responsibility related to Nassar's actions, per USA Today.
In the meantime, the Texas Tribune reports that Texas Rangers are investigating the reports of abuse that took place at the Karolyi ranch. "The public statements made by athletes who previously trained at the Karolyi Ranch are gut-wrenching," Texas Governor Greg Abbott said in a January 2018 statement. "Those athletes, as well as all Texans, deserve to know that no stone is left unturned to ensure that the allegations are thoroughly vetted and the perpetrators and enablers of any such misconduct are brought to justice. The people of Texas demand, and the victims deserve, nothing less."
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