Girls’s gymnastics is continuously ignored within the bigger world of athletics regardless of the very fact it is one of many hardest and most bodily demanding sports activities on this planet. Until it is an Olympic 12 months, the game is essentially ignored, and never simply by the plenty, however by sports activities journalists as nicely. It is recurrently left off lists claiming to characteristic the most effective or biggest moments in sports activities historical past. Actually, simply this 12 months, The Ringer published a list of classic sports moments from the last 50 years and managed to overlook each single triumph within the sport, from Mary Lou Retton becoming the first American to win the all-around competition and the Magnificent Seven winning the U.S. its first team gold in 1996 after Kerri Strug put her physique on the road, to Simone Biles winning her fifth world all-around title by record margin and Katelyn Ohashi’s viral floor routine in collegiate competition that earned her an ideal 10. It is as if the game would not exist.
Any such erasure is not precisely breaking information for girls in sports activities or for his or her followers; sports activities like girls’s gymnastics are at all times overshadowed by the likes of male-dominated sports activities, most clearly skilled soccer, basketball, and baseball. However even if you happen to perceive why they take precedence (viewership and cash), it is nonetheless irritating. That is why it is refreshing to see that YouTube Originals and Glamour are lastly placing gymnastics within the highlight, for higher or for worse, in Defying Gravity: The Untold Story of Girls’s Gymnastics.
Decorated Gymnast Laurie Hernandez Preps for Her Olympic Return in Defying Gravity Sneak Peek
The brand new six-part documentary sequence, which debuted Monday on Glamour‘s YouTube channel, explores the game from all angles, taking a look at its historical past and the way the competitors has modified over time, in addition to the technical facets of the 4 occasions — ground, uneven bars, steadiness beam, and vault — and the way younger girls push themselves each mentally and bodily to the restrict, upping the diploma of issue of their routines on the threat of damage with a purpose to set themselves aside from the remainder of the competitors. It digs into what makes a champion and celebrates the non-public tales of the game and moments of triumph, like Ohashi discovering a renewed love of gymnastics via collegiate competitors, Aly Raisman winning silver in the all-around in Rio after dropping a heartbreaking tiebreaker for third in 2012, and MyKayla Skinner’s return to Elite competitors.
However this is not only a shining documentary of athletic prowess. The docuseries makes use of first-hand accounts to dig into the widespread tradition of concern and abuse that has permeated the game for many years because it was thought-about profitable as a result of it produced champions. One episode reveals a shameful deal with physique picture to the purpose that it led to consuming issues and distorted perceptions of what’s regular or wholesome, whereas the fifth episode is dedicated to discussing the poisonous surroundings that enabled after which covered up a long history of sexual abuse, most lately and most notably involving former U.S. nationwide staff and Olympic staff physician Larry Nassar.
Grace McCallum
Nonetheless, regardless of the darkness that hangs over the sequence, there’s nonetheless a way of hope for the longer term as nicely. Defying Gravity, which shall be launched weekly until you join YouTube Premium, was filmed earlier than the coronavirus pandemic postponed the 2020 Summer season Olympics, so most of the interviews with present U.S. Nationwide staff members like Skinner, Riley McCusker, Morgan Hurd, Suni Lee, and Grace McCallum have been filmed from the earnest perspective of athletes hoping to make the Olympic staff and characterize the U.S. in Tokyo. They’re most outstanding within the episodes framed across the sport’s completely different occasions and the ultimate episode, as they talk about what it takes to be an Elite gymnast and the distinctive challenges they face and the sacrifices they make to be the most effective in a sport that requires immense energy and energy, however relying on the occasion, additionally calls for a sure fluidity and class.
End your browsing nightmare with TV Guide’s recommendations for every mood
For individuals who take part in or observe the game of girls’s gymnastics, Defying Gravity is not prone to reveal a lot in the way in which of latest info, particularly on the heels of Netflix’s Athlete A, which instructed the story of the Indianapolis Star‘s investigation into Nassar. Nevertheless it spotlights an attractive, if difficult, sport that has loads to supply and train ladies and younger girls if practiced in a wholesome method. And for many who solely tune in as soon as each 4 years and discover themselves drawn to the spectacular acrobatic tumbling passes that appear to defy not simply gravity however all of physics, the docuseries additionally provides an in depth and unvarnished historical past of the game that reveals the inside resilience and coaching it takes to not solely compete, but additionally excel in a sport that for thus lengthy has demanded perfection however has not often obtained consideration for doing the inconceivable.
Episodes 1 and a couple of of Defying Gravity: The Untold Story of Girls’s Gymnastics at the moment are streaming on Glamour‘s YouTube channel. Subsequent episodes will premiere Mondays at 12 p.m. ET / 9 a.m. PT. YouTube Premium subscribers can view all the sequence now.
Defying Gravity: The Untold Story of Girls’s Gymnastics