#ragan's gymnastics is Not For Me

[lobaznyuk]

texas dreams gymnasts just make excellent ncaa girls. when they're not half broken, that is

[my-random-fandoms]

I want to talk about this picture with someone but I honestly don't know what to say. Knowing there is a correlation between young women who tan and young women who are anorexic always makes me wonder about college gymnasts. This is beyond tanning and I don't know how worried to be about Ragan.

[an-apple-a-day-or2]

Also Ragan Smith sticking a double pike dismount off beam in the promo for US Classic is an attack.  Stop making me sad y’all. 

[catherinethegrape]

Not a day has passed since Smith's 17th birthday that she's practice without pain, she says. Her body "constantly hurts."Injuries haven't helped. Smith fractured her back at the American Cup in March 2016 and tore three ligaments in her ankle on a final pre-competition vault runthrough at worlds last October. She still wraps that left ankle in heavy bandage for high-pounding events, bruises and swelling visible when she removes the wraps even nine months later. But she can handle aches and soreness any day in place of injury."I've just got to suck it up," Smith said.

I’m sorry, but there is nothing heroic about “sucking it up” and we need to stop teaching kids this. She tore 3 ligaments in her ankle, was suggested surgery and decided to rehab it instead. Why not get surgery, and focus this year on just getting better for 2019-2020/NCAA? I honestly think this is an irresponsible choice, because the reality is Ragan’s life extends past 2020, she probably has 60-70 years left of it, and she will most likely have to live with these injuries and the impact of them for most of those years.

[sunisalee]

idk if sofia hults is planning on doing elite but if she does i'm gonna need her to get the fuck out of texas dreams bc i cannot handle a situation where she gets fucked over by the Texas Dreams Curse™

[swagslikemags]

Team Outing!! Cred:Ashton Locklear’s Snapchat!

[bellie-downie]

WHAT HAPPENED TO RAGAN???

[freifraufischer]

Kim Zmeskal: The ‘Good’ Coach or When a sport is so full of toxic coaches that people ignore what is in front of their faces to hold up a nice one.

Kim Zmeskal (Burdette) was a Karolyi gymnast of the early 1990s, the first American All Around world champion in 1991 and then a member of the 1992 Olympic Team.  One of the favorites to win All Around gold but she fell during compulsory beam and took herself out of contention.  She came away from Barcelona with a Bronze medal in the team event and was promptly labeled a failure and disappointment by NBC and her coaches.  She made an attempt to come back for Atlanta (all the while NBC was framing her momentary fall as Bela Karolyi’s shame) but injury and time caught up to her.

Zmeskal continued to compete until the late 1990s when she married Chris Burdette and they opened an elite gym Texas Dreams.  Her gymnasts appeared to like her, the media did profile pieces on the gym where she was portrayed as strict but fair and her gymnasts often had quirky YA fiction related floor routines and leotards that gained her the reputation as the good coach among a sea of terrible options.

And if you are reading this you are waiting for me to drop the shoes (or anvils) but I’ll start small.  She was a training partner of Dominique Moceanu, 1996 Olympian with an abusive family situation that was so bad that you couldn’t fictionalize it for fear of it being labeled unrealistic.  Moceanu was the darling of that gym that replaced Kim in the twilight of her career and when she would later speak out about the abuses she experienced Zmeskal was quoted in the LA Times saying she didn’t know what Moceanu was talking about and saying she must be “from another planet.”  Of course we now know that Moceanu was telling the truth.  Zmeskal also had a role in the slightly shady way Moceanu’s career would end with a denied petition to Nationals in 2006.  If this was a frienemies situation or an older gymnast showing the door to the younger one who replaced her I have no idea.  But I do question why after the sport turned on the Karolyis that Zmeskal’s role in defending them from accusations she had to have known were true wasn’t a red flag.

But that’s perhaps because there were so many other red flags they were busy ignoring.  See, Texas Dreams has other names in the gym world:  Texas Nightmares and Texas Injury Petition.  Texas Dreams with it’s world champion coach and good reputation attracted many high quality prospects but they never seemed to come to success as senior gymnasts as they were held back by injury.  Their most successful gymnast was Ragan Smith, 2017 National Champion who was injured at the World Championships that year when she was in position to win the All Around.  She would spend nearly a year in a boot despite the fact that she would continue to compete and never came back to that height.  She would later go on to be a star gymnast for the University of Oklahoma after she retired from elite gymnastics.  

It was well known, and discussed that Texas Dreams gymnasts were injury prone and over training from a young age was the obvious answer.  Despite this Zmeskal personally escaped much judgement.  She was a positive figure among a sea of screaming physically and mentally abuses coaches in the aftermath of one of the worst sexual abuse scandals in sports history.

And then two of their former gymnasts spoke out in August of 2020.  Ashton Kim and Kennedy Baker published open letters (and I suggest you read their words in full).  The list of injuries they describe and the mismanagement of the athletes health was certainly something suspected even if people wanted to write it off as the gym being ‘unlucky’.  The story about the girl who was left to crawl off the gym floor after a torn ACL on her own is certainly horrific and damning.  But then came the racism.  The casual jokes about masters and slaves from Chris Burdette, the use of a black gymnasts name as a stand in for the N word, and oh yeah... the story about Kennedy Bakers hair.  As Kennedy tells it, Kim Zmeskal entered her hotel room ‘pissed off’ about the length of her hair and proceeded to cut it without her consent or that of her parents.  A white woman with power over a young black girl cutting her hair is something that is difficult to forgive or forget in the climate of 21st century America.

The revelations of 2020 have certainly ended their reputation as ‘the good ones’ among American gymnastics coaches.  And perhaps a silver lining they caused many gymnastics journalists to publicly reconsider how they frame ‘good gyms’ in the future.  But there are still families sending their young girls to Zmeskal because they don’t know or don’t care or they know and think that despite all of this it’s still the way to get their daughter to the top.  

It’s not.

[viktoriakomova]

Prettyyy sure there was more to it than that re: the morgan vs simone episode. Morgan had a reputation at the time of being a mean girl to other gymnasts she'd trained with and there was some cliquey behind the scenes drama beyond the finsta post that was upsetting Simone and making her feel ostracized. And the story I remember was Morgan was specifically upset that she wasn't on the poster for nationals despite being world champ while Simone "didn't do anything" in 2017. So her "bitch it isn't just about you" post was definitely about Simone. And yeah Simone didn't handle it well but she was also under a ton of pressure trying to make her comeback, and while Morgan is a lovely, mature young woman now she wasn't always a very nice person back then and deserves some of the blame for that mess.

i didnt know this background info tbh (the downside of not being on gym twitter i guess?), its disappointing to hear tho.

i do, however, have a counterpoint to "simone feeling ostracized" and its that shes the only rio quad gymnast to make a serious attempt at a comeback (and who can blame them, given how everything with usag imploded after august 2016). ragan and ashton stuck around, but by summer of 2018 they were halfway out the door. she was 21 in 2018, being on the oldest side of the rio quad gymnasts (turned senior in 2013) she was significantly older than the rest of the national team girls. they were all teenagers, and teenagers who were not really her peers at any point in 2013-16, at that. so its natural that she wouldnt connect with any of them, and how could they possibly connect as peers with HER, simone goat biles? thats why the 'simone was ostracized' thing cuts no ice with me

[gymfanconfessions]

“Ragan Smith’s ending floor pose where she puts that pressure on her neck always freaked me out. It just looked so dangerous (you know, for gymnastics, lol).”

[twoflipstwotwists]

I just rewatched nationals 2018 and knowing Ragan’s injury and seeing her compete made me cringe. I could sense how scared she was to land tumbling passes/dismounts because of how bad her ankle was. Even Tim Daggat And Nastia commented on how Ragan must have been in excruciating pain on all of her landings. I mean, we even saw Ragan limping off of the podium after multiple apparatuses. I can never understand how her coaches can sleep well at night knowing they let her compete like that.

Obviously, I’m no doctor, but I hated that they made her compete. It also seemed kinda weird, because KZB is usually pretty controlling about her athletes competing if they’re not 100%? She’s definitely pulled gymnasts for poor warm-ups, so I’m not really sure what the goal was with Ragan; Tom Forster did say Ragan was improving steadily during Worlds camp, but considering the whole point of recovering via physical therapy was to avoid surgery, I don’t really understand why they kept forcing it. I guess it worked out for Ragan in the end, since she got a Worlds team gold medal, but I hope her long-term health hasn’t been too badly affected.

[tutyayilmazz]

"Ragan is the gymnast that got me into the sport" HOW DOES THAT EVEN HAPPEN AJSHFHJSBDJ

[sparklesandchalk]

"’It's definitely been a transition,’ said Ragan Smith, the reigning all-around national champion and 2016 Olympic alternate. ‘We're just training at our gyms right now. I went to [a training camp] in Tennessee, but that's the one that got cancelled halfway through because everyone got fired. It's definitely different.

We don't see the other girls often anymore .... It's definitely harder because you're not really sure what everyone's doing or what you're expected to do.’"

“Her return has seemingly allowed the focus to come back somewhat to gymnastics, and she was asked about having the pressure of having to essentially save the sport in the country.

‘It's both exciting and kind of scary because I don't want them to be completely dependent on me for the sport to continue,’ Biles said. ‘No, it's not fair to me because I can't carry the whole gymnastics world on me. But I guess it's kind of exciting I can bring some happiness back to the sport.’"

National camp will finally resume next month with new team coordinator Tom Forster ahead of November's world championships. Everyone seems eager to get back to normal -- or at least their new normal. Biles was rumored to be less-than-pleased with some of her new teammates during the U.S. Classic, taking to Twitter with some of her grievances, but seemed to be in better spirits on Wednesday.

[hundley-shuffle]

a neat thing about coming to NCAA championships that I hadn’t thought of...

is that if you’re just hanging around downtown Fort Worth all afternoon before the meet, you see gymnasts everywhere

literally, everywhere - saw Alex McMurtry while I was shopping at Loft, Deanne Soza and Ragan Smith walked past me while I was sitting in Sundance Square, and a ton of the Michigan team and I were waiting at the same crosswalk.

[lichfucker]

me, not understanding a word of any of your gymnastics posts: oh man ragan really did just double pike cowboy on the beam. unbelievable how is no one else talking about this

sdhghklshldghlsdhghskldghlkshdghlskdhlkghklsdg holy shit

[thehonoraryamerican]

Okay then, do them all haha (or if you're less invested, do all the multiples of five!)

Ok, you didn’t fill in any blanks for me, so I’ll fill them in myself :D

1. The USA National Team competes in the Hunger Games. Who wins?Well, out of all the girls I can remember being on the team, I’m gonna say Ragan Smith or Jade Carey. Ragan because she be little, but she be mighty (also her guns in Kim’s Instagram video the other day PHWOAR!). And Jade because I still cant believe she was a level 10 a year ago and her double double looks like THAT!

2. Who would be the most fun to watch in a future season of Dancing with the Stars?Eythora Thorsdottir for sure. She has the most amazing expression.

3. Favorite Event Final Leo?I’ve always loved the leotard Lauren Mitchell wore in the 2012 floor final. I know it’s hot pink, but the pink and black actually worked so nicely, especially on her pale skin. And the stars of our flag on the back of the shoulder was a really sweet touch.4. Most intriguing gymnastics scandal?Sydney 2000. I was enthralled with it when I first found out. What a shitshow that was.5. 2016 Olympic Team for USA if the format was still 7-6-5. 7 members:Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, Laurie Hernandez, Gabby Douglas, Madison Kocian, Mykayla Skinner, Ragan Smith (I know they were all technically part of the team anyway if you go team + alternates, my brain can’t remember much past them)

TF lineupVT: Smith, Hernandez, Douglas, Raisman, Skinner, BilesUB: Raisman, Smith, Hernandez, Biles, Douglas, KocianBB: Kocian, Raisman, Douglas, Smith, Hernandez, BilesFX: Douglas, Smith, Hernandez, Skinner, Raisman, Biles

6. Which gymnast would you not want to be stuck on a plane next to? McKenna Kelley. LOL.7. If your child was an elite gymnast, what gym would you send her to?If I lived in the US, I’d send her to World Champions. Not just because it’s the home of Simone Biles, but I feel like the Biles family have put together a great staff and a great program that really prioritizes the child’s health and happiness over any sort of medal.8. Which gymnast do you wish competed in another quad?Shannon Miller. I think she would’ve been a bomb ass beam specialist under the open ended code. 

9. What Olympic/Worlds Team selections do you disagree with?I was kind of ho-hum about Douglas last year (oops, 2016, not last year), but I mean, like Lauren has said 101 times, Marta literally could’ve justified anyone in that spot. I was also kind of gutted about Gabby Jupp last year, but I didn’t actually disagree with anyone who made the team, so it was a bit of a catch 22. I’m also still pissed that Australia didn’t send anyone to Worlds in 2013.10. Favorite gymnast’s makeup for competition?I really liked the blue touches in Aly’s for the Rio TF, I actually started copying it myself for a while. It’s a funky little thing to do!11. What’s the stupidest thing you ever heard anyone say about gymnastics/a gymnast?‘GYMNASTICS IS NOT A SPORT’12. Which elite gymnasts would make the best cheerleader, if she wanted to be one?Well, Simone got to be one, so she’s on my list, and definitely Laurie as well.13. Do you think fans should judge gymnasts for their opinions on political/moral issues? (e.g. Alec on Gay Marriage)It kind of depends. Like, if they have differing opinions but aren’t actually spewing hate about it, I kind of don’t care? I’ll use my Mormon friend as an example. She’s a devout Mormon, and has been brought to believe being gay is a sin. But she actually doesn’t have an issue with people being gay, and she never says anything hateful about it, the only thing she’s ever said to me about it is ‘my religion believes it’s wrong, but I don’t have strong views either way’, and I feel like if gymnasts are the same about political/moral issues, then just leave them be. If they’re actively spewing hateful shit and potentially upsetting or hurting people, absolutely call them out on it.14. What’s your favorite meet from before you were born? The 1996 team final. A whole six weeks before I was born.15. Do you think it’s distasteful for a gymnast to compete with a messy bun/half ponytail?No, because I often wear them myself. It actually is possible to make them look cute, trust me.16. What are your dream Olympic Podiums for 2012?In 2012, I was pretty happy with all the results, but I would change a few small things. I would’ve had Aly win the AA bronze tiebreak over Aliya, purely because even though she had a mistake, she actually stayed on all her events whereas Aliya fell. I’d have had McKayla win gold (without a fall obviously) on vault, and swapped out Maria Paseka for Janine Berger, and I would’ve snuck Lauren Mitchell in for floor bronze.17. If the IOC decided we had to get rid of one apparatus for the female AA, which would you choose?This is actually really hard... my very first instinct was bars. Not sure why, because I actually enjoy bars. Probably beam. Beam is the event where you could potentially lose an entire group and then the gymternet pitches a fit over the fact that all three medalists fell off beam and so X gymnast who came 18th with an FTY should’ve been the Olympic Champion. (I do love you all very much :D)18. What’s the worst leotard you ever saw?Some of Ferrari’s have been a little questionable (like the London one where she forgot to sew on a sleeve). And Adela Sajn is GREAT bad leotard fuel.19. Chill, Choreograph, Chuck? (Asker chooses 3 gymnasts)No-one gave me anything to fill these blanks so ahhhh, Simone Biles, Lauren Mitchell, Ellie DownieChill with Lauren, choreograph for Simone, chuck Ellie (I like Ellie, I do, she was literally one of the first three to pop into my head)20. Whose toe point gets on your nerves?Alyona. Lol.21. Favorite freshman to watch in NCAA Gymnastics this year?Kinda keen to watch Jazzy Foberg!22. What do you think Aly will do after she retires? I think she’ll keep doing what she’s doing. Speaking out against things that are valued to her, promoting safe and healthy sport, and just generally being a BAMF ally for women and athletes everywhere.