Fostering Healthy Athlete Development in Women's Artistic Gymnastics

The identification and development of young athletes to the elite level is practised globally. As we outline in the chapter, however, these systems have been shown to be ineffective in actually developing athletes towards elite performances and have been implicated in physically and psychologically harming athletes. Only recently have sports organisations realised that athlete welfare in the form of health and wellbeing is crucial for successful talent development, yet change has been slow to introduce new systems that better reflect this. Women’s Artistic Gymnastics (WAG) is a sport recognised to harm and be slow/ineffective in safeguarding its athlete population. The #gymnastalliance movement has challenged this, and gymnastics organisations are today under pressure to make amends. In this chapter, we present the talent development experiences of one gymnast, Kate (pseudonym). Using an ecological systems perspective, we map the factors that promoted and hindered Kate’s healthy gymnast development. This mapping demonstrates the many factors that harmed Kate’s health, wellbeing, and social development, and ultimately gymnast development. The extensive organisational neglect is particularly noteworthy and demonstrates the role of organisations in harming athletes long-term and the responsibility they have in protecting gymnasts. Kate’s suggestions for healthy gymnast development offer valuable information on how safeguarding is possible.