The floodgates have truly opened, and more stories keep pouring in. What began with one brave gymnast Tabea Alt, speaking out at the Stuttgart Artistic Gymnastics Forum has now spread to Mannheim. It all started with former U.S. national team gymnast Anna Li and her mother, ex-USA Gymnastics coach Jiani Wu, being suspended by the U.S. Center for SafeSport for allegations of verbal, physical, and emotional abuse at Legacy Elite Gymnastics in Illinois. Now, gymnasts from Mannheim are speaking out about their experiences under the long-time head coach, revealing a pattern of intense pressure and unchecked cruelty in the training methods.

Claudia Schunk, the former director of the Mannheim Gymnastics Performance Center, has been facing criticism lately. She ran the center for over ten years, from 2006 to 2017, and helped lead Germany’s top gymnast, Elisabeth Seitz, to international success. In 2017, Schunk climbed up the ladder to become the national coach for young female gymnasts, and with Ulla Koch stepping down, she became one of the most influential figures in German gymnastics. However, her legacy is now under scrutiny with former athletes coming forward with accounts of troubling coaching practices during her tenure.

Former gymnasts have opened up about the tough and sometimes harsh training they went through under her. They’ve spoken about how pain and injuries were often downplayed, verbal attacks were common, and punishments were part of the routine. One gymnast’s mother, Yvonne Meibner, who watched her daughter Zoe train, remembers being told to stay outside while the doors were closed during training. “They want the doors and shutters to be closed. So that you don’t see everything that’s going on in the hall,” she recalls.

Zoe Meibner, who joined Mannheim at just five years old and had dreams of going to the Olympics, had a traumatic experience under Schunk’s coaching. In 2016, this gymnast during a squad test, injured both of her legs while performing a floor routine. Despite her pain, Schunk insisted she keep going. “Despite her injury, Claudia Schunk sent her back on the beam,” Yvonne says. For Zoe, the whole experience was “just horrific”—having to keep training with swollen, painful feet. “I couldn’t walk anymore, but they still sent me back on the beam,” Zoe remembers. Her incident highlights the harsh side of Schunk’s approach, but it seems Zoe wasn’t the only one to face such treatment; another athlete also endured it.

The emotional impact of harsh gymnast training

Another gymnast, Naomi Schachner, was eight years old when she was accepted into Claudia Schunk’s training group in Mannheim. While gymnastics was fun at first, Naomi soon found the training methods to be increasingly authoritarian. “When it came to learning something new, which I was perhaps afraid of, I was forced to stay on the apparatus until I did the element. I sometimes trained my hands until they bled,” she recalls. If she couldn’t perform the element, she was either thrown out of the gym screaming or punished by being ignored.

Now 20, Naomi still feels the emotional scars from those early years of training. “I never see my performance as good enough,” she admits. When Claudia Schunk was asked about penalties, she denied ever punishing gymnasts for failing to perform a skill but acknowledged that she may have been more forceful in her coaching methods in the past. Naomi’s experience paints a powerful picture of the long-term impact that such intense and harsh methods can have, affecting her to this day. What do you think about this situation? Share your thoughts in the comments!