A. It’s All Bad

Big news on the USAG-being-terrible front: a WSJ article from Louise Radnofsky specifically delves into how information about the investigation of That Guy was withheld from Simone—and how information that Simone was a likely victim was in turn withheld from the FBI.

At the heart of all of this is Steve Penny’s (and by extension USAG’s) obsession with stage managing and manipulating everything the athletes did, using them as pawns for the benefit of himself and USAG. We see it as a pattern of behavior permeating everything, from Penny’s using Simone for his own gain by bringing her to that daughter’s party, to the truly horrendous idea that he would act as Simone’s agent to ensure he could exploit her to make as much money as possible off of her success.

So then of course he would stage manage the investigation of That Guy in exactly the same way. Because if you view athletes as tangible assets rather than autonomous human beings, you’re not going to see the problem in withholding information about an investigation that directly affects them, or not reporting their abuse to authorities. You sell off that asset, you protect this asset, you hide this asset in a secret account. Whatever suits your aims. They’re just objects, after all.

It’s truly depressing how beholden the athletes were made to feel to Penny, part of a wider infection of “you would be nothing without me” manipulation that is so rife in gymnastics, from the micro level—coach-to-athlete in gyms—to the macro level with Steve Penny.