Brittany Rogers is an adult and three years removed from her athletic career, yet the cutting words of her childhood gymnastics coaches still play like a broken record in her mind.
You're fat. You're stupid. You're not good enough.
"I don't think I fully grasped the magnitude of how bad it was until I was removed from the sport," Rogers said. "And not until I was fully retired could I reflect and see how it has affected me personally today and the aftermath I'm still dealing with."
Rogers, who competed for Canada at both the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, is among dozens of current and retired gymnasts who penned an open letter to Sport Canada about the maltreatment in their sport. While it's alarming in any sport, emotional and physical abuse in gymnastics usually involves minors.
"Something new surfaces almost every day," said. "My self-confidence is almost non-existent. I doubt myself. I can't even look at myself in the mirror sometimes because I'm either so judgmental in my physical appearance or it's just instilled in me that I will never be good enough."
WATCH l Canadian gymnasts demand investigation into abusive practices, toxic culture:
Rogers, who was weighed at virtually every practice as a kid, still works out six days a week because of her intense fear of gaining weight. She dreads it. There's no joy in the process.
"People don't understand the long-term repercussions of being told you're fat, you're stupid, you don't know how to do this," said Penny Werthner, a sports psychologist and the dean of kinesiology at the University of Calgary. "When you've been abused psychologically, emotionally, physically, sexually, it has long-term and often lifelong consequences."
Canada's Sport Minister, Pascale St-Onge, convened
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