#and honestly i don't think I've seen it since 2009 when i signed my life away to Uncle Sam (pro tip: do not)

[freifraufischer]

British Leotard Fit: the London Quad

One of the small notes in the Whyte Review into the abuses at British Gymnastics mentioned that the coaches would deliberately order competition leotards a size too small. I was asked during my watch to keep an eye out for evidence of this (since the Whyte Review was a little light on the circumstances of that). The reason to dig into this is that in an era of fast fashion a lot of people don't know what they're seeing when they see badly fitted clothing and what was being done here was extremely manipulative and dangerous. Viewers being aware of the signs of bad fit in leotards that span an entire team is a sign of abusive behavior that may be right in front of people.

When I last checked in I thought I saw systematic evidence of this in the Beijing Quad, with British leotards looking like they fit as well as any other federations until around 2006 when they started to develop some extreme fit issues (wrinkles in the armpit area and under the bust indicating that not enough room was in the garment in the shoulders or for breasts). By 2007 the fit issues were wide spread, enough that the 2007 Worlds qualification leotard fit exactly no one on the team well.

The video from 2008 isn't really good enough to judge in most cases though Beth Tweddle's finals leotard has some fit issues that @darthmelyanna said were odd to her professional seemstress' eyes.

My immediate reaction after watching 2009 and 2010 was that the practice might have stopped or eased at least. British leotards generally fit well even for gymnasts who did not have flat chests--though there was one from 2009 that had the same fit issues as earlier. I don't feel comfortable speaking much to 2011 because that is a year with relatively few meets surviving. I had wondered after Beijing if this was a pressure tactic that go worse towards the Olympics.

The answer at least for London was no. For the most part the British team leotards across the London Quad fit as well as any other federation. The exception though I think is worth talking about. No pictures this time because I don't think it's possible to take screencaps of what was going on here without crossing lines into what could be perceived as sexualization even if it isn't the intent of the discussion.

As I said earlier there was a gymnast in the early years of the quad who had what I thought of as a pretty badly fitted leotard and it struck me that the issue was that she was being expected not to have breasts. As an aside my mother in the 1960s while she was a very athletic young woman (a life guard who had passed tests involving carrying a 200 lb man across a pool) was put on thyroid pills to make her loose weight despite being 120 lbs largely because my grandmother and her doctor perceived her large chest as evidence of fat. I have wondered if that was what was going on with a lot of this leotard nuttiness because so many of the fit issues seemed to be with athletes that had breasts who were being given leotards for prepubescent girls.

But the single worst leotard fit issue I saw happened in 2012 and can't be put down to that. It is a first year senior and the leotard had what I've now come to think of as the classic wrinkling at the arm pit of a garment that doesn't have room in the shoulders or bust area. This leotard also had the vertical wrinkles at the bottom that are a sign that the entire garment is too short for the torso. You can also see her underwear coming out the bottom. The problems are so bad that they can be seen in long shots on television.

Given that she was a young senior I am honestly wondering if the leotard was ordered before a growth spurt (because I don't think this was an issue of one size too small but perhaps several). Given that the rest of the British teams leos appear to fit quite well it seems isolated and she doesn't have this issue at the Olympics.

That said... since this is one leotard we're talking about I can't believe her coaches let her wear the same leotard a second time given that you would have to be blind not to see that this one didn't fit her.