American Gymnastics Imperialism at the World Championships

At the beginning of the ninth session of the women's preliminary competition for the 2015 World Gymnastics Championships, the gymnasts who were starting on vault marched across the stage in their leotards and warm-up suits. Standing alongside the gymnasts from Chinese Taipei and Cuba, in their reds and blues, were the two gymnasts from Belarus. The announcer worked his way down the line, finally approaching the two from the former Soviet republic, calling out their names, "Kylie Dickson and Alaina Kwan!"

After the intros were done, Dickson and Kwan stripped down to their leotards, which were pink, not the red and green of Belarus. They've worn these pink iridescent sparklers all season while competing for All Olympia Gymnastics Center (AOGC). Each girl had simply affixed a patch of the Belarusian flag to her left shoulder.

AOGC is in Los Angeles, by the way, and, as you might have guessed, neither Dickson nor Kwan are actually from Belarus. They've never been there, they have no family from there—they have absolutely no connection to the country other than representing it on the world stage in its bid for a berth at the Olympic test event in Rio this spring, and then to the Games.

You might say they're from Belomerica. (A blogger at Balance Beam Situation refers to the pair as BeloAmericans.)

While national affiliation changes in sports are nothing new—so far this year, the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) has approved them for more than twenty gymnasts—this one has ruffled more than a few feathers. It's not just that these gymnasts have zero legitimate ties to Belarus. The same could probably be said for the former Russian gymnasts who now compete for Azerbaijan, a country that uses its enormous oil wealth to purchase a complete set of gymnasts who are older and not competitive enough to earn spots on the elite Russian national team anymore. In Azerbaijan, however, there was no national program to speak of before the Russians arrived. The transplants weren't displacing any local talent.

This was not true in the case of Belarus, which does have a national team and sent homegrown gymnasts to various international events over the past year, including the European Championships and the inaugural European Games in Baku. In fact, Belarus already had named two gymnasts, Sviatlana Lifenka and Valeryia Tsekhmistrenka, both recently turned 16, to their nominative roster for the 2015 world championships. But then the Americans received their Belarusian passports and, without a single internal meet or trial, they were simply handed those gymnasts' spots.

It smacked of American gymnastics imperialism.

The idea that two Americans could compete for Belarus certainly did not originate with these two teenage girls from Southern California. They had been approached by their coaches, who had been approached by members of the Belarusian gymnastics federation looking to recruit gymnasts to help them earn a berth to the Olympic test event in Rio in the spring of 2016.

Dickson, 16, and Kwan, 17, first qualified for elite competition in the United States in March of this year and competed at the U.S. Classic this summer. They each needed to score a minimum of 54.0 in the all-around to move on to the national championships in August. The U.S. is the only country that sets its bar quite so high, and neither hit that mark. Usually, that would mean an American gymnast's season would be over.

Before Classics, however, their coaches at AOGC, Arthur Akopyan and Galina Marinova had already begun the process of obtaining Belarusian citizenship for the two girls. Dickson and Kwan met none of the requirements—they weren't born in Belarus, their parents aren't citizens of the country, and they would've had to move there seven years ago to become naturalized—but there was a loophole. According to the Citizenship Act of 2002, the residency requirement could be waived for those "who can make significant contributions to the development of Belarus." A contribution like helping Belarus earn an Olympic berth.

The announcement of the girls' new citizenship caused waves of outrage across the gymternet, prompting hundreds of angry tweets and posts. One gym owner in Southern California blogged about the incident, describing it as "Kafkaesque."

Dickson and Kwan didn't exactly help their case in the interviews that followed. Their remarks were, at best, clueless, and at worse, arrogant. When asked how they can help the Belarusian program, Dickson answered, "I want to show them that their dreams can come true. If they want to be an elite and represent Belarus, they definitely can. You just have to push through the hard days and the good days. Give it a lot of dedication and time and patience."

Kwan didn't fare much better. "The U.S. is so dominant right now, which is great. But especially for the European countries, they are losing gymnasts because they think the U.S. is always going to win and they will never meet that expectation," she told John Crumlish, of International Gymnast. "But with us going, it's showing that we want to represent for you, and that you can still do it, but we just need more of you to come out,"

I certainly don't fault 16- and 17-year-olds from California for failing to grasp the complicated economic and political circumstances that left Belarus without the resources to sustain a strong national team. But Dickson and Kwan both spoke as though they were completely unaware that Belarus had a national team whose members had wanted to compete just as much as they did. Perhaps they were.

It might come as a surprise to hear a former Soviet satellite chasing after American gymnasts—and that the Unite States has the talent to spare. After all, the U.S. spent the better part of the 80s and 90s chasing the Soviet Union (and then the former Soviet Union) for medals. Sometimes they'd let us have a silver or bronze.

Those days are long gone. The U.S. has been the dominant force in women's gymnastics for nearly a decade, having built up the infrastructure to develop talent at all levels, from beginner to elite, in thousands of gyms across the country. Now Americans win gold medals more often than not. A big part of that success, in fact, is Eastern bloc coaching. These coaches, often former high-level gymnasts themselves, trickled into the West after the breakup of the Soviet Union. They settled mostly in the United States (though some went to Great Britain and Canada), where many started gyms of their own and began to train aspiring American Olympians.

By the early aughts, the first wave of these transplanted coaches' protégés hit the international stage and started to win medals. In 2004, Carly Patterson became the first Olympic all-around gold medalist for the U.S. since Mary Lou Retton in 1984; her coach was Yevgeny Marchenko, a former Soviet sports acro champion who immigrated to Texas. Her gym-mate, Nastia Liukin—coached by her world and Olympic champion father, Valeri Liukin—won the medal in 2008. And so on and so forth.

While the U.S. has been climbing the international ranks, its former Soviet rivals have struggled. In the immediate aftermath of the breakup of the USSR, republics like Ukraine and Belarus continued to do well in international competition. Even though the gymnasts were competing under new banners, they were still largely products of the old Soviet sports machine. After 2000, however, most of those gymnasts had retired. A new generation of gymnasts who never trained with Soviet resources started competing, and that's when the results started to dip.

While no longer the powerhouse it once was, Russia is still wealthy enough to sustain a strong national program and produce some of the best gymnasts in the world. They may frequently get defeated by American gymnasts, but they're still winning medals. The rest of the USSR has not been so fortunate. Ukraine, which boasted two consecutive Olympic all-around champions in the 1990s, sent only one female gymnast to the world championships this year; she placed 91st in preliminaries.

Belarus also has a storied gymnastics history in the sport, including Olga Korbut, the sport's first true international superstar, and half the 1972 Soviet squad. The 1988 and 1992 Olympic gold medalist Svetlana Boginskaya was nicknamed "the Belarusian Swan" by the media for her stately elegance and dance ability. Today, Belarus has disappeared from the top half of world rankings. And because funding in a lot of countries is tied to results in competitions, the more the gymnasts slipped, the more their funding was reduced, which in turn, leads to even more slippage and then more cuts. It's a negative feedback loop.

Belarus has struggled to find even one gymnast who can qualify for the Olympics Games. On the other side of the world, the depth of the U.S. program is such that American gymnasts who would never make the national team, much less the world and Olympic squads, could still outperform many of their peers around the world if given the opportunity to compete internationally. Including gymnasts from Belarus.

From the moment Dickson and Kwan started warming up in Glasgow, it was evident that not only were they superior to the Belarusian gymnasts; they were better than all the gymnasts in their group, who hailed from Cuba and Chinese Taipei. After successful vaulting, each recorded falls on bars (though Kwan's was due to a problem with her grips). On beam, Dickson fell while Kwan stayed on. And on floor—well, neither one fell off the floor. Kwan and Dickson scored about as well at the world championships as they had at the Classics, enough to land them in 73rd and 75th place, respectively, and put Belarus in company with Olympic hopefuls from New Zealand, Korea (North and South), Spain, and Trinidad and Tobago.

After the competition, the two girls met with the media in the mixed zone. I felt bad for them out there all alone, fielding more questions than two gymnasts who had placed below 50th and didn't make any event finals would normally be expected to answer. The U.S. women receive media training and have a liaison who helps them navigate those chaotic Q&As. The Belomericans were completely unprotected. Their American privilege might've gotten them to the world championships, but that's about it. Out on the floor and with the media, they only have the resources of the Belarusian team. Which is to say nothing. While Dickson moved on pretty quickly, Kwan, the more articulate of the duo, stuck around until she was the last athlete from her subdivision left in the mixed zone.

Someone asked her about passing up the opportunity to compete at the world championships. "It would be hard honestly," said the 17-year-old, whose father is a former Olympic diver who represented Hong Kong at the Olympics. Indeed, it would be a lot to expect of two teens, cloistered in the world of gymnastics, to recuse themselves from something they've been working to achieve since they were very young.

Yet Kwan appeared to exhibit little concern for the gymnasts whose opportunity she and Dickson took. "Honestly, we're not replacing anyone. We're just put in last minute," she said, noting that the other girls had international meet experience. "We just 'took their place' just to see how we would do and see how we would do for the team," Kwan added, gesturing with air quotes. She seemed to view it as a matter of turns: the Belarusian gymnasts had an opportunity to compete internationally under their flag; now it was time for the Americans to see if they could do any better.

Which they did. The Americans earned Belarus a spot at the Olympic test event in Rio. The homegrown talent wouldn't have gotten the job done in Glasgow: their best performance this year would've dropped them to around 100th in the crowded international field.

The only victims here are the displaced Belarusian gymnasts. Belarus and its Belomerican gymnasts are using one another as a means to an end, and so far it's worked out well for both sides. Neither Dickson nor Kwan appeared to know what the plan is from here. Belarus can send any gymnast it wants to the test event this spring, including one of its own, and there is reason to think that things may be looking up for the Belarusian women. The federation has reportedly hired a new coach, the Soviet-born Oleg Ostapenko, to work with their national team starting in January. With the test event being held unusually late—in April instead of in January—the team might have enough time to improve and send a "real" Belarusian gymnast to earn a spot for Rio. If not, however, it is likely either Dickson or Kwan will be dispatched.

If that turns out to be the case, get ready to cheer for Team Belomerica in 2016.