Bela Karolyi, the charismatic however polarizing gymnastics coach who reworked younger girls into champions and the United States into a global energy, has died. He was 82 years previous.
USA Gymnastics mentioned Karolyi died Friday. No reason behind loss of life was given.
Karolyi and spouse Martha have coached quite a few Olympic gold medalists and world champions within the United States and Romania, together with Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton.
“A big effect and affect on my life,” Comaneci, who was simply 14 when Karolyi coached her to gold with Romania on the 1976 Montreal Olympics, wrote on Instagram.
The Karolyis fled to the United States in 1981 and over the following 30-plus years grew to become a number one pressure in American gymnastics, although not with out controversy. Bela helped lead Retton – all 16 of them – to the Olympic all-around title on the 1984 Los Angeles Games and memorably helped an injured Kerri Strug off the courtroom on the 1996 Atlanta Games after Strug’s vault secured group gold for the Americans.
Kerri Strug is carried by coach Bela Karolyi in a memorable second on the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. (Photo by David Madison/Getty Images)
Karolyi briefly grew to become the nationwide group coordinator for USA Gymnastics’ elite girls’s program in 1999 and included a semi-centralized system that finally turned the Americans into the game’s gold normal. This didn’t come with no value. He was kicked out after the 2000 Olympics after a number of athletes spoke out about his techniques.
It would not be the final time Karolyi was accused of performing and pushing his athletes too far bodily and mentally.
During the peak of the Larry Nassar scandal within the late 2010s – when the disgraced former USA Gymnastics group physician was really sentenced to life in jail after pleading responsible to sexually assaulting gymnasts and different athletes together with his palms underneath the guise of medical care – greater than a dozen former gymnasts have come ahead to say the Karolyis have been a part of a system that created an oppressive tradition that allowed Nassar’s conduct to go unchecked for years.
However, a few of Karolyi’s most well-known college students have been all the time amongst his staunchest defenders. When Strug married, she and Karolyi took a photograph recreating their well-known scene from the 1996 Olympics, when he carried her to the medal podium after she jumped on a badly sprained ankle.
Associated Press reporting.
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