‘Are you wearing a bra under that dress?’ Former NZ gymnast Olivia Jobsis on an 'insidious' culture in the sport
Friday, 31 July 2020
Olivia Jobsis represented New Zealand at the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games. She also attended World Cups and various international competitions. Following her retirement she went into coaching and is now a judge.
To this day she still has bad flashbacks about her time as an athlete.
The culture associated with gymnastics is “insidious”, she said as part of a Stuff investigation into the sport, which launched today.
“It is a cult and it’s very insular. And it’s very small. The same people are [still] in charge.”
**READ MORE:
* Sport NZ moves to protect vulnerable athletes from Nassar-like predators
**
As a child and teenage athlete she says she experienced verbal abuse, and her body being pushed to the brink. She competed with serious injuries which has led to an ongoing prescription for painkillers to manage the pain.
She says she was fat shamed and regularly weighed, and has spent years in therapy working through the trauma the sport has caused her.
She claims she also witnessed or experienced inappropriate conduct by adults.
When she spoke up, she said she was silenced, and her complaints not taken seriously.
“You’re indoctrinated. You don’t get picked for teams. You get ridiculed in line up every day,” she said.
As a child, aged about 11, she says a coach referred to her as “Lolita” - a reference to a 12-year-old fictitious book character who was fantasised about, then sexually abused by her step-father.
“It was another way of sexualising a young child … it was a strange thing to do,” she said.
She said as a teenager, at an overseas event, she witnessed a male judge, who is still involved in the sport, attempting to put sunblock on a young athlete while at the beach.
She also witnessed him trying to tackle the athlete.
He “pretended it was innocent”, she said.
When she spoke up, her complaint was allegedly mishandled by her male coach. He encouraged her not to take it further if the judge apologised, she said.
“[The judge was] constantly trying to touch you. It’s just not right. I felt vulnerable … then I lost it. I screamed at him. I was 16,” she said.
“[The coach] was bullying me at the time and there was no independent person [involved].
“Nothing came of it and I was pressured by Gymnastics New Zealand. [The coach] and [the judge] pushed for me to … let it go.”
The judge acknowledged his behaviour was a “dumb thing to do” when contacted by Stuff.
He said the “misunderstanding” was “sorted” by a GNZ committee at the time and he wasn’t sanctioned.
“I apologised,” he said. “It was a scary time.”
The judge said there were no guidelines regarding conduct back when the incident happened, but said GNZ has started to implement changes in the “last year or two”.
Jobsis says she has also experienced sexually inappropriate conduct during her time as a judge.
A few years ago she received a message from a male judge asking her if she was “wearing a bra under that green dress?”. Stuff has seen the message sent to Jobsis.
The judge, who has been involved with the sport for more than 20 years, said the message was inappropriate and is remorseful regarding his behaviour.
“It was a ‘brain explosion’,” he said.
“[I thought] ‘it was a tight fitting dress. How do you not have lines or stuff showing?’.
“I put it out there, which was a big mistake. I don’t know why I was thinking that at the time.”
He said he’s never had any training regarding this conduct from GNZ.
“It never gets mentioned. This is probably why some people - myself included, obviously - don’t think that way about it, which is not good.”
Stuff has chosen not to name the judges, or the coaches who are the subjects of other allegations made in the investigation, at the express wishes of the athletes, who were intent on exposing a culture and environment that needed to change, as opposed to individuals.
The judge said the gymnastics environment should be treated like a workplace and some workshops regarding harassment would be a good start.
“There’s a ‘she’ll be right’ attitude, and it’s been around for years,” he said.
“Making people aware of the consequences of what they say and what they do would be a good start.
“But I’m pretty mortified [by the behaviour]. It happened a long time ago, but it doesn’t matter when it happened. It wasn’t … meant to insinuate anything … or be a proposition of any kind.”
Gymnastics New Zealand chief executive Tony Compier would not comment on specific allegations, but said the organisation was working on a “multiple-project strategy” that included athlete welfare and well-being.
He said the organisation ran a webinar on child safety in March.
As an athlete Jobsis claims she faced years of psychological abuse and mental manipulation from a national level coach. Her injuries, including a recurring ankle injury that resulted in reconstructive surgery after retirement, were not taken seriously. She says she was encouraged to “walk it off” and to remove a cast from her foot early so she could resume training.
The coach declined to comment when contacted by Stuff.
Her injuries, she said, were a result of over-training by the coaches. At 12 she was training more than 30 hours a week.
“We were punished with strenuous conditioning that was made to break us,” she said.
“We… all cried at least once a session.”
From the age of 13 she said she was weighed four times a week before morning training by her coaches. If she put on weight, she was lambasted by the coaches. One national level coach engaged in “mind games” and ignored her for 18 months, until she “fell into line and stopped questioning”.
She said she was praised for losing weight following a stint in hospital with food poisoning. Following her recovery she put weight back on and once again was scorned, in particular by the male coach.
She was told “you know when you had that illness and you were in hospital … that’s where you need to be”, she said.
“You know when you’re in an abusive relationship, how you feel like the world becomes small, and you don’t know what’s real or what’s not anymore? I was just trying to survive to get to the Commonwealth Games.
“I was treated like a bad person, a worthless athlete and I shouldn’t even be there.”
The coach declined to comment about these claims when contacted by Stuff.
Athletes were forced to run or bike if they were “overweight” and the male coach would drive alongside the pack of athletes running along the road, yelling at them, Jobsis claimed.
Again, the coach declined to comment when contacted by Stuff.
They were also allegedly watched at meal times and in dining halls. Athletes, she said, weren’t allowed to eat at training and consumption of water was frowned upon.
“You get looked at like you’re a pig if you had too much.”
Threats of bag searches for food were also prevalent including at the Commonwealth Games.
“It became really stressful trying to figure out ways [to hide food]. We knew they were checking our bags. They openly told us they were checking.
“That’s why we had to be devious and put [protein bars] in shampoo bottles. We’d also ask the male athletes to bring us food.”
Jobsis was also part of a New Zealand team, dressed in uniform, that got yelled at by the coaches in the middle of LAX for splitting a muffin between them, she said.
The coach declined to comment when contacted by Stuff.
“Passersby were like ‘do you need help’?” she said.
Verbal abuse was a common occurrence in a range of settings. She said it happened often in the gym and everyone would stop and watch.
“The whole gym would stop when [the national coach] was yelling at us, or if we were being emotionally ripped apart or belittled. It would be so intense and awkward. Everyone would feel shocked but no one ever stepped in.
“Not even once.”
During her coaching career she said she also experienced intimidation and witnessed coaches calling young athletes “stupid”.
“I know how damaging it is to these young girls who are busting their gut,” she said.
There is a culture, she said, of complaints not being taken seriously and while things are improving, it’s at a glacial pace.
“Some things are better, but not really because the same people are at the top,” she said.
“They make it out like there’s more support [but] there’s no teeth.”