Columnist Dean Juipe: U.S. gymnast exposes sorry side of sport

When they're taking their bows and showing off their medals in the spotlight of the Olympics, gymnasts are in all their glory. They bounce around, acknowledge the unrestrained applause and do their best to be darling while soaking up the euphoria.

Appreciative viewers marvel at the slender contortionists and pour on the affection. They see the gymnasts as bubbly and cute and, at this pinnacle, everything about this difficult sport and those who have mastered it seems downright wonderful.

It leads to smiles all around and excellent TV ratings.

Gymnastics is a staple of Olympic programming and its performers are routinely lauded for their incredible discipline. As sports go, this is one that has been around forever and will likely always retain a certain attractiveness to the general public.

But there's a darker side to gymnastics that occasionally surfaces, like it did this week in Houston when 17-year-old Dominique Moceanu not only ran away from home but filed suit against her parents.

A gold medalist at the 1996 Atlanta Games, Moceanu (pronounced Mo-chi-an-u) has grown tired of doing cartwheels for her family. She wants her freedom.

Her father, Dumitru, wants her back so she can resume training, telling a wire-service reporter "I hope she changes her mind and comes home and starts training again."

What an absolutely awful reaction. At a time when sympathy and an open mind may have come in handy, old man Moceanu displayed the exact type of indifference to his daughter's desires that led her to flee to a friend's house.

Shame on him. Shame on the sport, too, which is just coming off a book-length expose by Joan Ryan entitled "Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters."

Those two sports snap up toddlers and -- from a distance at least -- attempt to transform them into machines, if not zombies. It's fine if the kid likes it, but what if he or she shows some aptitude for the sport yet still wants to get out?

What if you have a father like Dumitru Moceanu, who hasn't worked since he sold used cars in 1996 and who now lives off his little girl's income?

"It's hard to have a childhood if you want to be a professional gymnast," said Las Vegan Vitaly Scherbo, a native of Belarus who won six gold medals at the Barcelona Olympics and one bronze at Atlanta. "There's no time to have a little fun."

Scherbo, who is opening a new gymnastics academy here Sunday, didn't care to expound on this delicate matter when contacted Thursday. He probably didn't think the timing was beneficial.

The Catch-22 for prospective gymnasts is obvious: There's honor and glory and money to be made, providing you stick to a rigorous practice schedule that precludes any sort of normal life.

To each their own, but it seems like a pitiful trade. While others your age expand their tastes, you're confined to regimented training under instructors that may seem like taskmasters or ogres.

In Moceanu's case, she has been additionally burdened by her father's alleged physical and verbal abuse and by her parents' preoccupation with living at their daughter's expense. A trust fund set up in Dominque's name has been depleted without explanation, and now she's suing for the right to be declared an adult.

She's weary of being manipulated. She still enjoys gymnastics but she wants control over her scheduling, her coaching, her free time.

She's tired of living her life for her parents, which is something parents everywhere should keep in mind before they enroll their precious little ones in these extended day-care academies.

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