When the Georgia GymDogs hosted Arkansas for a high-stakes SEC gymnastics showdown on February 14, 2025, the night was supposed to be about power, precision, and poise. And definitely, it was! But it started with smoke! Literally. A fire outside Stegeman Coliseum sent an eerie haze drifting into the arena. Inside, Cecile Landi, the ex-coach of Simone Biles, who is leading Georgia’s resurgence, watched her team battle through the disruption. The GymDogs edged out a tense victory, but as the final scores flashed, the air cleared, but questions lingered!

The cause of the fire is under investigation! But confusion has spread, and so has speculation! The topic recently became the talking point on the GymCastic Podcast hosted by Jessica O’Brien and Spencer Barnes. “Yeah, so when the broadcast starts, we see—at first, they tell us it’s the pyro, the pre—pyrotechnics that caused all the smoke. Then a Georgia spokesperson had to be like… “It was not our fault, it was not our fault, it was not our fault! We didn’t do anything wrong. We do this for every meet,” Barnes said on the podcast.

The first sign of trouble came just nine minutes before the meet started. At 6:51 p.m., a small fire outside Stegeman Coliseum sent plumes of smoke curling into the night air. By 7:00 p.m., it had been extinguished, but not before smoke found its way into the arena’s ventilation system, creating hazy conditions inside as reported by OnlineAthens on February 14th.

The smoke wasn’t just in the air—it was in the stands, in the corridors, in the confusion of fans caught in an unexpected disruption. Emily Crawford, a former gymnast, was among them. “I was at the Georgia meet. It was so smoky,” she shared on GymCastic. Witnesses described it as half the arena evacuating while gymnasts, unshaken, stayed on the floor. Spencer Barnes, breaking down the bizarre scene, noted, “We saw like half the stands were empty when the meet was about to start because they had been evacuated—but not the gymnasts, because, you know, keep going.”

Barnes wasn’t alone in questioning the decision to let gymnasts compete in a smoke-filled arena. As No. 11 Georgia led by Simone Biles coach, secured a 197.125-197.050  win over No. 15 Arkansas, criticism swirled online. “Allowing athletes to continue to compete in a smoke-filled Stegeman Coliseum is irresponsible at best,” Shannon Buff posted on X, sharing a video from inside the venue.

If Stegeman Coliseum’s smoke-filled showdown raised eyebrows, it was far from an isolated case.

A look at the gymnastics center caught in the fire

On the same day of Georgia’s meet, another fire broke out. A gymnastics center near Middleville was completely destroyed in a fire on Friday afternoon. The blaze broke out at Gymnastics In Motion, located on M-37, with emergency calls coming in around 1 p.m. Firefighters arrived to find the building already evacuated, and no injuries were reported.

Crews worked throughout the afternoon, spraying water on the smoldering remains while an excavator began tearing down what was left of the structure. Multiple fire departments responded to the scene, but the cause of the fire remains unknown as of now.

This incident isn’t alone! Flames erupted at Astro Gymnastics in Scotland in December last year. Astro Gymnastics, which days prior hosted 300 young athletes for a major competition, caught fire around 1:00 in the afternoon due to an unknown cause. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service responded swiftly, and no casualties were reported.

Interestingly, this isn’t the only recent fire at a sports facility. Blazes at Woolbridge Youth Sports Complex in the U.S. and West Coast Gymnasts in Australia have also left communities shaken, with causes still unknown. In most of the cases, casualties have been avoided, but such cases raise alarms. What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments down below!