The American gymnast Aly Raisman is perhaps best known, among fans of the sport, for an ambitious and almost unbeatable floor routine. Scored to “Hava Nagila,” in honor of Raisman’s Jewish heritage, the set opens with a tumbling pass so loaded with flips and twists that it’s miraculous she’s ever managed to stay in bounds. A six-time Olympic medallist, Raisman earned gold on the floor in 2012, at the London Games, and silver in 2016, at the Rio Games, behind only her teammate Simone Biles. Under Raisman’s captaincy, the U.S. women achieved victory in the team competition at both Olympics. Raisman, who is now twenty-seven, announced her retirement from competition in 2020. She left the sport as the second-most decorated Olympic gymnast in American history.
In recent years, Raisman has become equally well known as an outspoken advocate for athlete safety and as a fierce critic of USA Gymnastics, the sport’s embattled governing body. She captured worldwide attention, in 2018, as one of the gymnasts who testified at a public sentencing hearing for Larry Nassar, the disgraced former physician of the national team, after he was accused of molesting more than two hundred young women. (Nassar is serving what amounts to a life sentence in prison.) The revelations of Nassar’s abuse prompted repeated turnovers in the leadership of USA Gymnastics and produced a litany of headlines detailing the failures of the organization and of law enforcement in handling the allegations. (Earlier this month, a report from the Justice Department revealed delays in the F.B.I.’s investigation.) Since Nassar’s imprisonment, Raisman has partnered with Darkness to Light, a leading advocate for the prevention of child sexual abuse. In the world of professional sports, she told me, “I don’t think that we’ll see change with the same people in power.”
Raisman’s younger teammates often referred to her, lovingly, as Grandma Aly. Before the pandemic, she had planned to watch the Olympics live in Tokyo; instead, she FaceTimed with Biles as Team U.S.A.’s plane waited on the tarmac, and will watch the Games from home. Last week, as podium training began, I met Raisman on a hotel rooftop in downtown Boston. “I thought it was going to be harder for me, but I feel at peace,” she told me, of being a spectator rather than a competitor in the Summer Games for the first time since 2008. She wore bluejeans and beige flats printed with “The Future is Female.” With her were her mother and her beloved, blue-eyed rescue dog, Mylo, who recently went missing for nearly a week. During our conversation, Raisman wrapped Mylo’s leash around her waist, to keep him near. We spent two hours discussing the pandemic Olympics, the culture of gymnastics, and the delicate balance between the duty to speak out and the desire to move on. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
These Olympics are obviously unlike any other, because of the coronavirus. Recently, Kara Eaker, a U.S. women’s gymnastics alternate, tested positive and was placed under quarantine. I’m wondering if you’ve heard from any athletes about how they’re feeling or what is unique to the situation in Tokyo.
I feel so terrible for the athletes who have COVID. It’s devastating to think about working so hard and then not being able to compete when you’re so close. I also think about the mental health of athletes quarantining by themselves in a foreign country. I hope they’re getting the support that they need. It’s such a stressful time that I don’t even know what they’re thinking. There’s already enough pressure as it is.
Can you imagine what it would be like to compete in the absence of a crowd?
There have been times when the crowd is really helpful and uplifting. Then there are also times when I’m doing a bar routine and someone on another event falls and you can hear the crowd gasp, or the crowd erupts for someone else, and it startles you. One of the hard things about beam finals, for example, was I felt like I could hear a pin drop. It’s so quiet in there, and sometimes you can hear the clicking of the cameras, you can hear someone talking in the audience, so that might be distracting. Gymnastics is not one of those sports where you want to be pumped up.
I was curious if you’d followed Sha’Carri Richardson’s disqualification and what you made of that.
I support her, and I can’t say enough how impressed I am with her, and with how well she’s handled this. I can’t imagine the heartbreak that she feels. I think that the mental health of athletes is often ignored.
At least from what she’s saying, it sounds like she’s going to keep running, and, hopefully, she has many more Olympics in her, because I think she’s a superstar. To my knowledge, weed does not make you run faster, so I just don’t understand at all. Maybe they’ll end up changing the rules, because it seems like it’s very outdated.
How will the pandemic affect the broader Olympic experience—touring the host city, hanging out with other competitors? Do you think athletes this year are going to be missing a lot outside of just gymnastics?
Some of my favorite memories are things like going to the cafeteria and saying hi to the swimmers, or being able to meet athletes from other countries. We were so focussed on gymnastics, so it was fun to be able to have that nice distraction. I also loved pin trading with other athletes from all over the world. Even if you don’t speak the same language, you can still trade with them and communicate.
This year, if athletes don’t make an event final, they have to leave. We have so many great memories after we finished competing of just hanging out together. In Rio, we went to the beach. We went to both closing ceremonies. I feel sad that they’re not able to experience that.
I saw a recent poll indicating that only twenty-two per cent of the Japanese population believes that the Games should proceed, and there have been some questions in the press about the ethics of continuing the Olympics at all amid, as the Times recently put it, bidding scandals, human-rights outrages, doping revelations, etc. Is there a case for the Games to be abolished altogether, or do you feel strongly against that?
What I love about the Olympics—and it might make more sense to say this at a time when we’re not in a global pandemic, and maybe I’m biased because I competed in them, and I dreamed of going when I was a young gymnast—is that it has the opportunity to bring people together to share a love for sports. When I was little, my favorite gymnasts weren’t just from the U.S. I looked up to Ukrainian gymnasts, Romanian gymnasts, Russian gymnasts, and people from all over the world.
But I do think that it’s important to listen to people’s concerns with how things have been handled in the past. Gold medals shouldn’t be the most important thing. It’s important for the [International Olympic Committee] and anyone else in charge of these Olympic Games, and whoever is hosting them, to listen to what people are saying. It’s probably not a surprise to you that I agree there are many times where people at the top don’t put safety and well-being first.
Can you help us understand how the yearlong postponement would affect an Olympic hopeful’s training?
I don’t know what I would have done. I don’t know if I would have survived it physically and mentally. There are so many different factors—maybe some athletes couldn’t afford to train for a whole other year, which is heartbreaking. For a lot of these athletes, unfortunately, their worth is defined by making the Olympic team. It’s important for national governing bodies like USA Gymnastics to make sure they have programs in place for the athletes who do get injured, or who don’t peak at the right time, so that they know they’re more than just gymnasts, and that if they don’t accomplish their Olympic dreams now they still have their whole lives ahead of them. That’s not something that’s in place right now. Even the gymnasts who felt like they benefitted from the extra year and still didn’t make the team—it’s gut-wrenching to talk to them, and to hear just how broken they feel.
