Bela Karolyi, gymnastics coach who mentored Nadia, Mary Lou and courted controversy, dies at 82

Hungarian Bela Karolyi, coach of the U.S. gymnastics crew.
| Photograph Credit score: Reuters

Bela Karolyi, the charismatic, polarising gymnastics coach who turned younger ladies into champions and america into a global energy, has died. He was 82.

USA Gymnastics stated Karolyi died Friday (November 15, 2024). No reason for dying was given.

Karolyi and spouse Martha skilled a number of Olympic gold medalists and world champions within the U.S. and Romania, together with Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton.

“A huge impact and affect on my life,” Comaneci, who was simply 14 when Karolyi coached her to gold for Romania on the 1976 Montreal Olympics, posted on Instagram.

The Karolyis defected to america in 1981 and over the following 30-plus years turned a guiding power in American gymnastics, although not with out controversy. Bela helped information Retton — all of 16 — to the Olympic all-around title on the 1984 Video games in Los Angeles and memorably helped an injured Kerri Strug off the ground on the 1996 Video games in Atlanta after Strug’s vault secured the crew gold for the Individuals.

Karolyi briefly turned the nationwide crew coordinator for USA Gymnastics ladies’s elite program in 1999 and integrated a semi-centralized system that ultimately turned the Individuals into the game’s gold normal. It didn’t come with out a value. He was pushed out after the 2000 Olympics after a number of athletes spoke out about his techniques.

It will not be the final time Karolyi was accused of grandstanding and pushing his athletes too far bodily and mentally.

In the course of the peak of the Larry Nassar scandal within the late 2010s — when the disgraced former USA Gymnastics crew physician was successfully given a life sentence after pleading responsible to sexually assaulting gymnasts and different athletes along with his fingers below the guise of medical remedy — over a dozen former gymnasts got here ahead, saying the Karolyis have been a part of a system that created an oppressive tradition that allowed Nassar’s habits to run unchecked for years.

Nonetheless, a few of Karolyi’s most well-known college students have been all the time amongst his staunchest defenders. When Strug obtained married, she and Karolyi took a photograph recreating their well-known scene from the 1996 Olympics, when he carried her onto the medals podium after she vaulted on a badly sprained ankle.