Film Review: "Athlete A" (2020).

"Was winning worth the cost?" This is the ultimate question presented in Athlete A. This sports documentary film directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk. focuses not the gymnastic who survived USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar's abuse and the reporters who exposed USAG's toxic culture.

In Summer 1936, the U.S. sent its first women's gymnastics team to the Olympics held in Berlin. In 1963, The United States Gymnastics Federation was founded. Prior to the 1972 Summer Olympics, Women's Gymnastics was a sport competed by athletes who were well into their twenties. This began to change when the seventeen-year old Olga Korbut became the darling of that year's games held in Munich with three gold medals and one silver. The turning point came in the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympics where a fourteen-year old Nadia Comăneci scored an unprecedented "perfect ten" in the games as well as capturing three gold medals, one silver and one bronze. Buoyed by the success of the Warsaw Pact countries' success in Women's Gymnastics with their child-like aesthetic and coupled with the high profile defection of Comăneci's coaching staff, Márta and Béla Károlyi, the USA Gymnastics installed the Károlyis as the Women's national team coordinators in their quest for Olympic success. This is a move that would pay off tremendously as the country would produce a substantial amount of medalists on the international stage such as Mary Lou Retton, Shannon Miller, Gabby Douglas, Simone Biles and McKayla Maroney, just to name a few. The success would reap a financial jackpot as USAG would attract major corporate sponsors such as McDonalds, Dodge, K-Mart, Kellogg’s, and Hershey’s. But behind the scenes, sinister acts were being committed on a gargantuan scale. The organisation was prioritising medals over the well-being of their athletes. The athletes were subjected to a variety of abuse including sexual molestation on a daily basis by Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics National Team Doctor and Osteopathic Physician at Michigan State University. Nassar joined the USAG National Team Medical Staff in 1986 as an Athlete Trainer. USAG was aware of the sexual misconduct complaints since 1998; however USAG did not investigate the abuse due to lack of letter complaint from a parent or athlete. Therefore, USAG continued to turn a blind eye. In early August 2016, The Indianapolis Star launches an investigation with their article A blind eye to sex abuse: How USA Gymnastics failed to report cases. This culminated in more than two hundred and sixty five women accusing Nassar of sexual assault. Finally, by late January 2018,  Nassar was sentenced to forty to a hundred and seventy five years in prison on sexual charges, plus sixty years for child pornography charges.

The film, which documents the crimes of Nassar and USAG, is a near two hour nightmare that will probably be aggravating if not triggering for a lot of people. There's a bigger, broader story to be told about Nassar and USAG, their web of secrets, the network of the organisation and the ways that money corrupts.

Simon says Athlete A receives: