Report lays bare welfare failings at heart of British Gymnastics

British Gymnastics enabled a toxic culture that prioritised profit over safeguarding and encouraged an era in which young gymnasts were subjected to shocking levels of physical and mental abuse.

The extent of the scandal that has tarnished the domestic sport’s golden era has been laid bare in a damning 306-page review by Anne Whyte QC, published on Thursday, which was jointly commissioned by UK Sport and Sport England in 2020.

“I have concluded that gymnasts’ well-being and welfare has not been at the centre of [British Gymnastics’] culture for much of the period of the Review and has not, until very recently, featured as prominently as it ought to have done within the World Class Programme,” wrote Whyte.

Whyte drew her conclusions from over 400 submissions following her call for evidence, over half of which reported some form of emotional abuse, nine per cent involved sexual abuse, and over two thirds of which were primarily critical in tone.

The review revealed horrific personal testimonies, including one of a seven-year-old being sat on by a coach and another who said they feared their legs would “snap” during a process in which they were being pushed down to perform the splits.

Gymnasts reported instances of being made to wear a dunce’s cap and being called a “cry-baby” in front of their peers. One parent described how a complaint about their child being called a “faggot” on a daily basis was “shrugged off as a joke” by the club’s welfare officer.

Whyte went on to describe a catalogue of failures by the governing body, including its inability to efficiently deal with complaints, its disregard for athletes’ opinions and its reluctance to intervene over well-known weight-management issues, which she described as the