#safesport

[figureskatingfanblog]

Ivan Desyatov has been temporarily suspended by SafeSport for "allegations of miscondcut" and is under investigation.

[levelofyoureye]

so after literal YEARS of my friends telling to watch yuri on ice bc i am a figure skater, i finally started it today. i am three episodes in and loving it but also… OH MY GOD IS SAFESPORT NOT A THING IN THIS UNIVERSE?!?! victor nikiforov my beloved ilysm but you are also just a walking safesport violation jesus christ dude 😭😭 yuri STAND UP

[roseandsalt]

the streets (fstwt) are saying that the skam dance swap was actually usfs politicking with all the grace of an elephant

[the-sound-of-her-wings]

USFS and SafeSport I am in your walls

[bvdomination]

The following is a joke - proceed with caution (sensitivity and kindness).

An Ice Dance Incest Map

It's bella's world and we're all just living in it

Inspired by this invisible string chart (x)

[rainbow-arrow]

i decided on my thesis topic i should be getting to celebrate not write more papers this isn't fair........

[icepixie]

Okay, yet another SafeSport suspension/sexual abuse allegation in figure skating is disappointing and sad and infuriating (particularly as I really enjoyed Flores/Desyatov's skating), but, unfortunately, it's not shocking anymore.

However, I did not have "three marriages between US girl/Russian boy dance couples that sure look like green card scams, while they were all teenagers, two of which were kept secret for years" on my bingo card for this season. What on earth is going on at that training center???

[an-apple-a-day-or2]

"poor hezly she is rooming by herself"

NO she is being protected by safesport guidelines as she is the only minor on the team

Also they are literally in an apartment that shares a living space / bathroom / balcony

[usaonetwothree]

I only watched the first two episodes, but in no particular order:

You don't have the athletes meet at the venue. You have them meet in the hotel room and walk over together. It's a safety and centering thing. Also, you show up way earlier to the venue than you need to, like an hour early, for warmups and more mental prep.

If Sam was 15 minutes late, there should have been a consequence. Otherwise it's setting an unfair example to the rest of the team (I laugh as I type that as if it hasn't in the past four seasons🤣)

Under no circumstances do you go wandering off by yourself, especially in a strange city. So Sam wandering around the venue looking for her dad, or the kids leaving their hotel rooms at night is a HUGE safety issue and should have been warned against. No way the Moskowitzes would be okay with that.

If I had ever talked to my coaches like Sam talked to Johnny, I would have been benched.

What they did get right:

Any small bit of drama that's been festering always comes to a head at travel tournaments. I don't think I've been to a single one where something hasn't happened. Just due to small living spaces and increased time together.

Johnny is 100% right that they needed points on the board. High seeds play low seeds. You don't want to have to take on the #1 seed and get blown away, especially with a team that is struggling heading into an elimination round.

Don't get me started on the Miyagi Do v Cobra Kai fighting styles thing, especially with Sam who benefited from Johnny's support in Season 4(?) All Valley. I thought we left that behind a few seasons ago. 😥

No spoilers for CK season six part ii but it was very clearly written by someone who never played competitive team travel sports.

[icedancewitch]

bella is back, baby!!!! i don’t wanna speculate about the implication of her social media “comeback” and what this means for their partnership and even m*rri*ge… but i just wanna say, i’m so happy that this situation has not discouraged her from working on her goals!!! bella is such a talented skater, and to think that her potential will be wasted on such thing is inconceivable. ngl, i’m still waiting for the result of the safesport investigation but based on my experience, speculations are unproductive.

ANYWAYYYYY!!! yaaay for bella!!! 🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻

[p21blackandgold]

RANT INCOMING because this i swear this woman does not think before she speaks

Mykayla Skinner… please tell me you didn’t just say that the girls who made the Olympic team have no work ethic. The same girls that beat you to the 2020 Olympic team (obviously excluding Jade who was already qualified as an individual and Hezly who was like 12).

and the “Suni doesn’t have a gymnast body” comment!? The fuck??? The idea that you need to have a certain body type to be a good gymnast or even good at any sport is pathetic, and does not have a place in 2024.

this one just made me laugh, but she misses the days of being “precise and clean.” Didn’t the FIG literally create a deduction off the back of her one armed Chengs 😭

and to top it off, she’s pro-Karolyis and anti SafeSport 🫠

[twistedprofessor]

I'm only going to say this once: MyKayla and her family do not deserve death threats.

It can also be true that she does not get to play victim, and use mental health as an excuse. She did not give a shit about the teams' mental health when she went after their work ethic, talent and physical appearance.

She did not give a shit about current and previous athletes' mental health when she claimed that SafeSport (an organization founded to protect said athletes from physical, mental and sexual abuse) was a "problem" because "coaches can't yell at their gymnasts any more".

When you choose your words, deliberately, and put them out onto the Internet for the world to see, you cannot expect to be free from the consequences of those words.

[trippednfell]

RE: Mykayla Skinner it blows my mind that someone can seek the attention of social media so desperately, then suddenly want it to stop the moment they are called out on their own behavior.

She sought out the likes and clicks until she was rightfully called on the terrible things she said. To be clear - there is a lot of focus on the "lazy" comment, but she said with her whole chest that she thought things were better before SafeSport. When athletes could be and were abused. And she fired those shots at women who were abused under that system. Who were SA'ed under that system.

And now, now she wants those same women to come to her defense? They owe her nothing. They may do it - because they choose to, because they're better people than I am, but they don't owe it to her. And yes, I will say no child should receive death threats. But you know how to avoid that? Don't make your infant child content for your "brand." Don't take a small child that cannot consent and plaster them all over social media to further your own dreams of being an influencer.

If her family is her top prority then maybe deactivate her accounts and focus on that family and disappear and the hate will die down. But she can't do that, because even though people are sending hate her way, it's still engagement. It still feeds the part of her that must be in the spotlight. For me, I intend to ignore her from this point forward because I think that our indifference is what will hurt the most. We should just not care about her. Because she isn't worth the time.

[erikahenningsen]

Can you explain the mikayla gymnastics drama? Why is she blocking people?? Sorry I don't follow gymnastics but I do love drama

In short, a few weeks ago, Mykayla Skinner (former elite and NCAA gymnast and individual competitor at the Tokyo olympics) posted a now-deleted video (here's a clip) to her YouTube channel saying that she thinks that current American elite gymnasts aside from Simone are less talented than American gymnasts "used to be" because they don't want to work hard. She then blames this on USA Gymnastics' recent reforms to prevent abusive coaching (called SafeSport) and that in order to be a great gymnast, your coach has to be "aggressive." She also made comments about Suni Lee's body, saying she doesn't have a "gymnast body," whatever that means. Mykayla posted an apology on her instagram and blamed her comments on... the abuse she experienced as a gymnast. You know, the stuff she was praising. A lot of current and former gymnasts came out against Mykayla's comments when it happened. So then Simone made this post after the team won gold, which was a dig at Mykayla, and then Mykayla blocked her (and possibly other team members? not sure if that's true). And now it's been picked up by CNN and NBC lol.

I've been a day-one Skinner hater because she is just generally shitty and has posted racist stuff on social media in the past, and in general has terrible sportsmanship (here's a pretty comprehensive list of all the shitty stuff she's said/done). She thinks WAY too highly of herself for someone who has literally the ugliest gymnastics I've ever seen. Girl has never met a 180-degree split in her life. So none of this was a particular surprise to a lot of people.

There's also this gender reveal she did when she was pregnant, which isn't relevant to this but IS hilarious (her husband's last name is Harmer):

[anewbeginningagain]

Trigger warning: sexual assault, depression, disordered eating

As details about the new Gracie Gold biography come out, a new WSJ article disclosed the following:

"Gold’s memoir “Outofshapeworthlessloser,” which will be published Tuesday, includes her explosive allegation that at 21 she was raped by a fellow skater at an event after-party—and that five years after the incident was reported to the U.S. Center for SafeSport, she has no idea whether the case has been resolved. "

This is so heartbreaking and horrifying and adds yet another proof of the incompetency and systemic failure of the figure skating community. I hope this story will get some follow-up because MY GOD.

I hope I'll get to read this biography, but what thing that is clear is how toxic fs fandom is. In 2016/17 season (and prior to it) everyone was getting a kick from watching her crumble, always perceived as an American princess who was a symbol of white privilege her demise came as entertainment to so many. I still remember the story of her throwing her team USA coat to the trash and how everyone responded to it (TSL celebrated it as DRAMA of course). I wish we would all learn something from this, but watching how fs fandom are celebrating the demise of Kevin Aymoz I suspect no one has learned anything.

[viktoriakomova]

havent read the report for myself yet but a) i have a hard time believing none of farden's behavior amounts to a violation (this was not an official investigation), b) if indeed it doesn't, that's quite damning of the standards of abusive behavior established by safesport and ncaa