I am sorry but this, this crap right here is the problem. It was the same dang excuse with Nassar and Karolyi. Just because you haven’t witnessed something doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened!
Listen to the words of Ohashi, Larson, Atler and understand the interactions between two male coaches are very different than daily coach/gymnast interactions.
And with all due respect, you coaches are quite often the worst at defending your own kind. Heck one of the “expert” USAG coaches on this very board referred my kid to the abusive coach who chased her out of the sport and damaged her body permanently. He probably still thinks her old coach is a fine coach.
Of course he wasn’t privy to her being called fat, stupid, lazy on a regular basis for 4 years. He didn’t travel to meets where my daughter and her teammates would be dragged to restaurants, where he coaches would eat and drink and yuck it up, while telling the waiters the girls were to be served nothing but salad. He didn’t hear that coach tell the PA who said my daughter needed to see a surgeon, that my daughter was faking it and it was all in her head. He didn’t watch her suffer an entire level 10 season in agony from her “fake” injury, while her coaches called her a lazy idiot who wasn’t worth their time to coach. And he didn’t sit through 2 damn surgeries to fix a limb that will never be normal for my daughter again.
So no, pardon me if I consider the Valeri seems great to me line, to be a giant pile of crap. I believe the athletes, not the coaches club.