The week after national championships, Ohashi published a blog post about her experiences with body shaming and dieting as a junior elite, citing coaches, parents, and even fans who posted nasty comments about her body on her Youtube videos and Instagram posts. She wrote It started when I was 1. Ive been told I looked like I swallowed an elephant or a pig, whichever was more fitting that day. I was compared to a bird that was too fat to lift itself off the ground. If I looked bigger on a given day, I had to run and condition with heavy sweats until it seemed like I was ready to start practice. Ive even been asked to sign a contract that would basically prohibit me from training if I did not lose weight. Ohashi doesnt specify the gym or the coach but if youre familiar with the timeline of her careerOhashi left her previous gym, Great American Gymnastics Express GAGE in Blue Springs, Missouri in 2. Liukin at WOGA, the gym he owns in Plano, Texas. In her post, Ohashi published excerpts from her diary from that period, which chronicle her increasingly troubled relationship with food and eating, her mothers attempts to hide the unhealthy food from her in order to help stay fit, and her late night obsessive conditioning. Ohashis fellow gymnasts rallied around her blog post. Sarah De. Meo, a former national team member and teammate of Ohashi back when she still trained at GAGE, tweeted this in response More than simply supporting Ohashi, De. Meos tweet indicates that the sort of damaging coaching practices that Ohashi described encountering at WOGA were not just limited to that particular gym. Al Fong, head coach and owner at GAGE was featured prominently in Joan Ryans 1. Little Girls in Pretty Boxes. One of his former athletes, 1. Christy Henrich, died from anorexia. And another, Julissa Gomez, broke her neck in a vaulting accident at a competition in Japan and died a few years later. Atler, Ohashi, De. Meo, and Raisman are hardly the first gymnasts to speak out about their negative experiences in the sport. Back in 2. 00. 8, 1. Jennifer Sey published her memoir Chalked Up My Life in Elite Gymnastics, which detailed her experiences with harsh, unsafe training practices, injuries, and eating disorders. Four years later, 1. Olympic champion Dominique Moceanu published her memoir, Off Balance, which was especially critical of Martha and Bela Karolyi, her personal coaches, for the emotional abuse they subjected her to when she was a young teen. Moceanus memoir was published while Martha Karolyi was still the national team coordinator and the U. S. women were in the middle of a winning streak and didnt seem to have an impact on how USA Gymnastics managed elite level gymnastics in the United States. And Moceanu, in recent interviews, has spoken about how she became something of a pariah in the gymnastics world and has missed out on professional opportunities because she had the audacity to speak out against the Karolyis and USA Gymnastics. Seys and Moceanus books received a fair amount of attention and sold very well when they were published. But the booksand more importantly, the issues they attempted to addressfaded from view during the years between the Olympics. This is not a criticism of the books or the gymnasts. They more did their part to bring these issues to the fore. Media attention focus, in general, on the sport, tends to be at its peak during the Olympics and the sport fades from mainstream view during the years between the Olympics. And Sey and Moceanu were, for the most part, lone voices on these issues. The rest of the community remain largely silent at least in public and left them out there, twisting in the wind. But with the Indianapolis Stars blockbuster investigation into how USA Gymnastics failed to address reports about predatory coaches, which was published on the eve of the Rio Games, and the subsequent revelation that the team doctor had been accused of sexually abusing scores of gymnasts, USA Gymnastics has been under sustained pressure and scrutiny to admit past wrongdoing which it hasnt done and reform its practices which it has promised to do. And with each passing month, more and more gymnastsmostly former with the exception of Raisman who has not determined whether or not shell train for Tokyohave joined the conversation, offering public support of victims and condemnation of USA Gymnastics. The last time there was this kind of sustained focus on the downsides of womens gymnastics was around the publication of Little Girls in Pretty Boxes in 1. Oprah did an episode about the book, featuring the author and elite gymnasts like Kristie Phillips and Betty Okino a TV movie based on the gymnastics aspects was made. The book also looked at the problems in womens figure skating. But what was missing back in 1. Ryan told the stories of former gymnasts who had come forward to her about abusive coaching, injuries, and eating disorders, but there wasnt a way for other gymnasts to easily join the conversation that the book had started and add their own experiences.