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Olympics 2024Future of the Olympics Pastries Records in real life L.A. Olympics
1984
Olympics 2024Future of the Olympics Pastries Records in real life L.A. Olympics
1984


ACCUSED OF ABUSE — AND BACK IN THE GYM

Gymnastics promised a reckoning, but coaches who faced allegations remain in the
sport. Athletes say the truth of what happened in one top gym still hasn’t been
told.

32 min

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Key takeaways

Summary is AI-generated, newsroom-reviewed.

 * Sydney Freidin recalls abuse by coach Artur Akopyan.
 * Akopyan accused of physical, emotional abuse.
 * USA Gymnastics, SafeSport criticized for inaction on abuse cases.
 * Former gymnasts express fear for athletes under Akopyan's care.
 * Akopyan, Marinova deny allegations, continue coaching without restrictions.

Did our AI help? Share your thoughts.

After former gymnast Sydney Freidin reported coach Artur Akopyan to SafeSport in
2020, records show, the center closed the case administratively, telling Freidin
that it couldn’t find enough witnesses. (Allison Zaucha for The Washington Post)
By Molly Hensley-Clancy
July 23, 2024 at 5:00 a.m. EDT

It was the gardening gloves that made Sydney Freidin’s stomach turn.

She was scrolling through social media when she saw a photo of them on the hands
of her former coach, Artur Akopyan. He was a gymnastics legend — an Olympian for
the Soviet Union, former member of the USA Gymnastics coaching staff and
personal coach to Olympians, including gold medalist McKayla Maroney.



For Freidin, though, seeing Akopyan brought back different memories. She
recalled him once flinging a young girl into the air in rage after she made a
mistake during an aerial cartwheel. The girl began to cry after she hit the
floor, Freidin and another former gymnast said.

And then there were those gloves. Akopyan was known to wear them to spot
gymnasts at All Olympia Gymnastics Center, the California gym he co-owned. When
he was angry with Freidin after a mistake on the uneven bars, she said, he would
grab her and throw her to the ground so hard that his gloved hands left marks
and even bruises.

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The gloves meant Freidin’s worst fear was true: Akopyan was back.

Gymnastics was supposed to change. After USA Gymnastics was roiled by
revelations of sexual abuse by former team doctor Larry Nassar, a wave of
gymnasts, including Freidin in 2020, accused their former coaches of physical
and emotional abuse — and of enabling Nassar in the process. Their sport’s toxic
culture, gymnasts said, was part of the reason the doctor had been able to abuse
athletes for so long.

USA Gymnastics, the sport’s powerful governing organization, cleaned house and
vowed to remake the sport. The U.S. Center for SafeSport, an independent body
set up by Congress in the wake of the scandal to investigate misconduct across
Olympic sports, promised an era of accountability. Both made significant strides
toward preventing and responding to sexual abuse.

But gymnasts’ allegations of physical and emotional abuse in their clubs have
been met largely with inaction, an investigation by The Washington Post found,
leaving hundreds of young gymnasts still in the care of coaches accused of
serious misconduct.

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SafeSport has investigated at least six coaches of recent U.S. Olympians or
alternates over allegations of emotional and physical abuse, according to news
coverage and reporting from The Post, as well as several other coaches of elite
gymnasts. But they are all still coaching. None of the probes have resulted in
public findings, and most are still open. In 2022, SafeSport “administratively
closed” the case against Akopyan and his gym’s co-owner, Galina Marinova,
records show, which typically means it did not find enough evidence to move
forward but that the case still could be reopened.

Nearly 300 other coaches affiliated with USA Gymnastics have been banned or are
suspended for misconduct, according to SafeSport’s database. But most are
ineligible because of criminal convictions, not SafeSport’s own investigations.
Among the gymnastics coaches SafeSport investigated itself, none were banned
solely because of physical or emotional abuse, and only one is suspended.



USA Gymnastics, meanwhile, has chosen not to put restrictions on top coaches
under investigation by SafeSport, even when they are accused of serious
misconduct. In the instances when the governing body has investigated club
coaches itself, without SafeSport, it suspended some coaches after
investigations, but it has also faced criticism for lax punishments — including
in 2020, when USA Gymnastics allowed the reinstatement of several prominent
coaches in California whom it had reportedly found to have committed physical
abuse.

The Post interviewed dozens of gymnasts who competed for coaches publicly
accused of physical and emotional abuse after Nassar, as well as attorneys,
parents, gymnastics officials and advocates, to understand how the sport
responded in the wake of the Nassar scandal. The Post also reviewed court
records, police reports and medical records.

No case exemplified a failing athlete safety system more than Akopyan’s, which
has not been previously reported. Ten former gymnasts told The Post that Akopyan
physically abused them or their teammates when they were girls, including nine
who said he had thrown young gymnasts to the ground in anger, sometimes hard
enough to leave bruises. In 2010, documents show, Los Angeles police
investigated him for possible child abuse over allegations he dragged a young
girl by the neck and arm, bruising her — an incident two gymnasts told The Post
they witnessed. And Desiree Palomares, a former All Olympia gymnast, said that
when she was around 11, Akopyan slapped her across the face after he believed
she had spoken back to him.



Gymnasts also said Akopyan was emotionally abusive, screaming, degrading them
and mocking their injuries. And they said Marinova, the gym’s co-owner,
emotionally abused and body-shamed them.

Yet both coaches have continued to work without restrictions. SafeSport’s and
USA Gymnastics’ decisions not to take any public action in response to athletes’
complaints, The Post found, concealed the misconduct allegations from the public
for years.

Akopyan and Marinova did not respond to a detailed list of allegations sent via
email, text message and certified letter. When a reporter delivered the letters
to their gym, Marinova told the reporter she did not want to comment.

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The coaches have previously denied claims of abuse. In 2016, Mattie Larson, a
former All Olympia gymnast and Nassar victim, accused the coaches in a lawsuit
of creating an “abusive” and “harassing” environment. In court documents,
Akopyan and Marinova denied all of her allegations. They defended themselves in
a 2018 letter to parents, saying they had spent 25 years “protecting and loving
our girls.”

“Our sacrifice has been met with un-appreciation and betrayal,” they wrote.

They settled Larson’s lawsuit for $1 million, Larson’s attorney said.

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In the letter, Akopyan and Marinova announced they were taking a step back from
coaching. But they quickly returned to the sport. At its location in Calabasas,
Calif., All Olympia now appears to be thriving, promoting on social media a
young gymnast who committed to UCLA last year and two who represented Mexico and
Jamaica at the 2023 junior world championships.

SafeSport declined to comment on any individual case. But in a statement,
SafeSport CEO Ju’Riese Colón suggested the center is trying to tackle a growing
caseload more efficiently. “Behavior that was once tolerated or ignored is now
prompting individuals to come forward with their stories,” Colón said.

USA Gymnastics also said it could not discuss individual cases. A spokeswoman,
Jill Geer, said the organization has made strides toward cultural reform,
especially at the national team level, by overhauling its sexual assault
reporting process, creating an athlete bill of rights and elevating Nassar
survivors to leadership and advisory roles.

Geer said USA Gymnastics referred high-profile cases to SafeSport “in part to
avoid potential conflict of interest issues.” SafeSport, she noted, also
typically had far more information about allegations than USA Gymnastics.
“Unlike USAG, the Center has the evidence, authority to investigate and ability
to call witnesses should a hearing be necessary,” Geer said.

Tasha Schwikert Moser, an Olympian who was selected by a committee of Nassar
survivors to sit on the board of USA Gymnastics, said she has seen the
organization make progress — especially in its national team camps, where top
gymnasts gather regularly and which were, for decades, a brutal and abusive
environment. At Olympic team trials in June, therapy dogs were brought in to
help gymnasts cope with the intense atmosphere.



“They’ve spent years completely revamping policies and procedures, and they’re
encouraging athletes to speak up,” Schwikert Moser said.

But she acknowledged that when it came to local clubs — where even elite
gymnasts spend the vast majority of their time — the culture was sometimes
different despite efforts to educate the thousands of coaches licensed by USA
Gymnastics.

“There’s still some coaches out there, elite coaches and club coaches, that just
don’t get it. I think that’s the challenge,” Schwikert Moser said. “Not all
elite coaches have taken self-reflection and looked in the mirror and said,
‘Wow, I was part of the problem, and I need to change.’”

Three parents of gymnasts who competed at All Olympia after 2020 told The Post
they had no concerns about either Akopyan’s or Marinova’s coaching. Their
daughters had been treated well there, the parents said.

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“There would not have been another place I would have felt as safe when it comes
to learning proper gymnastics techniques,” said Stacey Foxson, whose daughter
competed at All Olympia. “I’d do it over and over again.”

But many former All Olympia gymnasts said they worried for athletes still in
Akopyan and Marinova’s care — and for others in a sport they believe has not yet
reformed its toxic culture or sought justice for girls who were physically and
emotionally abused.

“It makes no sense to me at all,” said Talitha Jones, who trained at All Olympia
as a child and went on to compete for the University of California at Berkeley,
“that they still have a gym.”



THEY WERE THERE TO TALK about Nassar, the man who had sexually abused gymnasts
for decades. But some of the women in the courtroom for his sentencing also
wanted to talk about something else: their own coaches and the culture of the
sport at its highest levels.

“Larry, you saw all the physical, mental and emotional abuse from our coaches
and USAG national staff,” Jamie Dantzscher, an Olympian, said during Nassar’s
2018 sentencing hearing. “... Instead of protecting children and reporting the
abuse you saw, you used your position of power to manipulate and abuse as well.”

Their coaches’ emotional and physical abuse, gymnasts said, had helped to create
the world in which Nassar thrived: one in which their bodies were not their own,
their instincts could not be trusted, adults were to be feared and winning came
at any cost.

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Nassar’s sentencing was the beginning of an outcry that would upend the sport.
In 2020, USA Gymnastics suspended coach Maggie Haney for eight years after an
investigation of emotional and physical abuse allegations made by an Olympian,
Laurie Hernandez, and other gymnasts. Haney denied many of the allegations and
sued USA Gymnastics, but the case was dismissed in 2022. An arbitrator later
reduced the suspension to five years.

Haney’s suspension spurred more gymnasts to report their coaches, speaking up in
podcasts and documentaries, on social media and in formal reports. The movement
gained a name and a hashtag — #GymnastAlliance — with the hope, gymnasts said at
the time, that this was finally the moment for “lasting change.”

But Haney was not just the first coach of recent U.S. Olympians or alternates to
be penalized for emotional or physical abuse. She was also the last.



A string of other prominent coaches faced SafeSport investigations for emotional
and physical abuse allegations. SafeSport’s 2022 investigation of Valeri Liukin,
father of Nastia Liukin and once USA Gymnastics’ national women’s team
coordinator, is still open, according to someone who was recently briefed on the
case. So is the investigation of Qi Han, who was accused of kicking an injured
gymnast at a meet, SafeSport’s database shows. The investigation it launched
into Al Fong is also still open, Fong told The Post, after he was the subject of
physical and emotional abuse complaints in June 2020. And the Orange County
Register reported that SafeSport was also investigating Jiani Wu and her
daughter, Anna Li, whose athletes alleged they had pulled their hair and
fat-shamed them.

Fong told The Post that the allegations against him were baseless and that he
believed SafeSport was succumbing to outside pressure by not deciding the case
in his favor. Han, Wu, Li and Liukin did not respond to requests for comment.

SafeSport has not issued public findings against any of those coaches, and only
one, Han, is subject to any temporary restrictions while its investigation is
ongoing. All are still coaching. One of Liukin’s gymnasts, Hezly Rivera, will
compete for the United States in the Paris Olympics.

In its statement, SafeSport said it recently had begun prioritizing cases open
longer than two years, which would include those languishing gymnastics
investigations. The organization said it had identified more than 120 such
cases, roughly one third of which it had resolved since December.

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Federal law limits governing bodies from investigating or disciplining accused
coaches while SafeSport investigates. But governing bodies are allowed to impose
“safety plans,” such as banning unsupervised contact with athletes. There are no
safety plans in place for any of the prominent coaches whom SafeSport
investigated, aside from Han, according to a USA Gymnastics registry of
suspended and restricted coaches.

At Nassar’s sentencing, Larson, who had for a time been among the country’s best
gymnasts, spoke at length about the torment of elite gymnastics — and how her
coaches’ mistreatment had fueled Nassar’s abuse. Those responsible, she made
clear, included Akopyan and Marinova.

“Who was I going to tell?” Larson testified. “Certainly not my coaches, who I
was afraid of.”



THERE WAS A TIME, GYMNASTS SAY, when All Olympia was a different place.

It opened in 2000 under Marinova, a former Bulgarian gymnast who competed at the
1980 Olympics. She played music and allowed the girls to make up their own
routines. In the summer, gymnasts said, there were workouts at the beach and ice
cream on the way home. Championship banners accumulated on the walls.

But as the level of the gymnasts increased, so did the intensity. Marinova
shunned college gymnastics, several gymnasts said, labeling those who went to
the NCAA ranks as failures. Instead, she wanted gymnasts on the “elite” track,
the sport’s demanding upper echelon that can eventually lead to the Olympics.

Akopyan joined All Olympia full time around 2004 to train Olympic hopefuls. He
had been a groundbreaking and powerful vaulter for the Soviet Union, scoring
three perfect 10s in the 1981 world championships, before he immigrated to the
United States and began to coach vault for the USA Gymnastics national team.

Marinova was known for her ballet-like artistry, Akopyan for his power and
technicality. Together, they demanded perfection: perfect conditioning, perfect
lines and perfect appearance, which meant not wearing shorts, even during
training. Their leotards were beautiful and elaborate, but their behavior,
gymnasts said, was expected to be “robotic.”

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“In my eyes, they were fricking geniuses,” said Veronica Hults, a former junior
national team member who competed at All Olympia. They coached the way they did,
Hults said, “because they saw the results it produced. … We were incredible.”

“Artur was like a god to me,” said another gymnast, who now competes in college.
Like others, she spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution in the
tightknit world of competitive gymnastics. “When he loves you, you’re the most
incredible, beautiful angel in the whole world.”

But when he was angry, Hults and other former gymnasts said, Akopyan could be
terrifying.

“Artur would throw panel mats. He would squirt us with water bottles. He’d cuss
at us if we made a mistake,” Hults said. “I hated it. I used every excuse in the
book not to go to the gym. You’re constantly in fear.”

“Anything could happen” when Akopyan was angry, said Maguire Garcia, who left
All Olympia in 2017. “He would grab the girls by their arms and throw them to
the side, and it was scary.” When he spotted gymnasts, Garcia said: “You knew
that if you made a mistake … you’re not coming down safely. You’re at his
mercy.”

The skills the gymnasts were attempting at the highest levels were dangerous.
But some women said that long before they should have practiced unassisted, they
would sometimes take on skills alone rather than have Akopyan spot them.

“I felt like the risk of injury by myself was lower than him spotting me,” one
former elite gymnast said. “Because if I didn’t do it the way he wanted, he
would throw me.”

One gymnast, Desiree Palomares, recalled that when she was 11 or 12, she was
playing a game with her teammates on the tumble track where the girls took turns
trying to “stick” different skills. Akopyan scolded her for playing.

“Yes,” she remembered replying, “but it’s a sticking game.”

Akopyan slapped her across the face, said Palomares, who is now 29 and a public
defender in Colorado. Another gymnast told The Post she was present during the
incident and witnessed the immediate aftermath. At home, Palomares told her
parents that Akopyan had slapped her.

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“I was furious,” her father, Rene Palomares, told The Post. “I always knew he
had a temper, and I’d seen how he mistreated some of the girls. I couldn’t
believe he could do that.”

Rene Palomares said he went to the gym to confront Akopyan, who denied striking
his daughter. He said Marinova ushered them into the break room, where Akopyan
tried to fight him. Afterward, Rene Palomares and his wife debated what to do,
he said, “because we also knew she was good at what she did.” They decided to
send their daughter back to All Olympia, though she later moved to another gym.

“I wish I could have done things a lot differently, especially thinking about it
now,” Rene Palomares said. “I think with a lot of parents, the fear was if they
spoke up, that they’d damage their daughter’s opportunity to go to college.”

Los Angeles police later learned of Akopyan’s allegedly violent behavior. In
November 2010, Akopyan came into the gym in a fit of anger, according to two
gymnasts who were present, and began to target an 11-year-old girl during
conditioning, forcing her to repeat a difficult handstand skill.

“He was screaming at her, ‘Now you have to do 10 more,’” one gymnast who
witnessed the incident recalled.

When the girl began to sob, the gymnasts said, Akopyan demanded she stop crying.
But she couldn’t. When she stood up, Akopyan grabbed the girl by the back of her
neck and arm and dragged her across the floor so that her feet were briefly
lifted off the ground, the gymnasts said. He threw her out of the gym and into
the office, they said.

“It was like she was floating in the air because she was so tiny,” a gymnast
said of watching Akopyan drag the girl out of the room.

The girl’s mother took her to the hospital, according to an emergency department
discharge form reviewed by The Post, where doctors diagnosed her with a
contusion on her upper arm. Photographs the mother provided to the police, which
were also reviewed by The Post, show a red mark covering the back of the girl’s
neck from her shoulders to the base of her ponytail.

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Los Angeles police investigated, a police report shows, but Akopyan was referred
to a diversion program instead of facing charges. The program, a city website
says, is for misdemeanor “cases where a crime has been committed but prosecution
may be inappropriate.” In Akopyan’s case, “no further action was taken”
following a hearing, a city spokesperson said. The spokesperson would not
provide any details.

The gymnast who was involved declined to comment on the record for this story.
The Post does not name alleged victims of child abuse unless they ask to be
named.

Not long after, Talitha Jones recalled, Akopyan stormed into the gym with an
X-Acto-style blade and began to “hack away” at posters with the girl’s name on
them. “He was just going crazy,” Jones said. “I’ll never forget that.”

Jones was one of many of Akopyan’s former gymnasts who said they believed he had
come to the gym drunk in those years. They remembered finding cans of beer
outside a garage-style door in the gym that opened to the outdoors, jokes he
often made about Heineken and long periods when Akopyan would disappear and then
return in a different mood. Many remembered the smell of beer on his breath —
even if they did not recognize it at the time, they said, their older teammates
explained it to them or they came to recognize it as adults. Freidin said she
remembers telling a SafeSport investigator about Akopyan’s drinking.



Akopyan’s behavior did not change after the incident with police, four gymnasts
said, but instead seemed to intensify. So, too, did gymnasts’ fear of him.

“A held breath,” Jones said. “That’s what it was in that gym at the time.”

As Akopyan’s behavior escalated, his athletes did what they could to protect
themselves, gymnasts said. On her drives to practice with her parents, one
gymnast remembered “hoping, wishing, praying that we would get into a car
accident so we didn’t have to go.”

Garcia and three other gymnasts said they or their teammates remembered hiding
from Akopyan’s anger in the bathroom, including two who described a girl locking
herself in the bathroom and crying that she was afraid of him. Akopyan banged on
the door until she opened it, they said. Garcia’s mother finally pulled her
daughter out of the gym, she told The Post, after her daughter texted her a
photograph of herself crying because of Akopyan.

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Abigail DeShazo, now 24, said she witnessed, alongside Freidin, Akopyan throwing
a young gymnast during an aerial flip. The image has remained with her for more
than a decade, she said. But at the time, she said, her reaction was muted.
“Retrospectively thinking about it, it was horrible,” she said. “But in the
moment it was just, ‘We should do what we can to not be in that situation.’”

Gymnasts said they grew to dread Akopyan’s good moods along with his bad ones.
Four women said they believed Akopyan acted inappropriately with them by patting
or pinching their bottoms and commenting on their bodies in ways that made them
uncomfortable, as children and even more acutely as adults. Three said they were
made to hug Akopyan when they did not want to, often after a day in which he had
hurt or berated them.

Akopyan had not been sexually abusive to them, they said. But the erosion of
boundaries — and of their bodily autonomy — had a profound effect on them, they
said. Being made to hug Akopyan, one former elite gymnast said, “was the most
demeaning, disrespectful thing I had to do.”

“He made me feel violated,” Freidin said. “He made me feel icky in my body.”



THERE WERE THINGS about Marinova, too, that many gymnasts could never forget.

She had strict rules about food. Carrots were “yellow carbs”; grapes had “too
much sugar”; chewing gum pumped air into your stomach. Water was often forbidden
on the floor of the gym, multiple gymnasts said, in part because Marinova told
them they would “bloat.”

One gymnast said she stopped drinking water altogether around age 10 “because I
was afraid I would get fat” until her skin developed rough, dry patches that are
a sign of chronic dehydration. Her parents tried to make her hydrate, she said,
but she would pour water from her bottle into the trash to conceal that she was
still not drinking.

There were also lessons about how to restrict food. If you want a bite of a
cupcake, you can taste it and then spit it out, two gymnasts said Marinova told
them when someone brought in birthday treats.

When practice ended late, DeShazo said Marinova would tell them she hoped they
would be too tired to have dinner. “She’d say you wouldn’t feel the hunger if
you went to sleep right away,” DeShazo said.

And then there were her judgments of their bodies. Marinova called young girls
“fat,” four gymnasts said, and criticized their bodies constantly, warning them
against weight gain and praising them when they lost weight, even when it was
because of illness.

Several of the women believe Marinova’s lessons contributed to eating disorders
they experienced later in life.

Gymnasts said they rarely doubted Marinova’s belief in them. But when they did
not live up to her high standards, they said, she could be cruel, sometimes
pinching them to get them to straighten or throwing objects in anger.

When Palomares was around 11, she said, Marinova took her to a competition in
Texas without her parents. Palomares was injured, and she fell on the last pass
of her floor routine. When she looked around for her coach’s approval, Marinova
was nowhere to be found. Hours ticked by, Palomares recalled, and some parents
had to stay behind to supervise her as the competition emptied out.

“She’d gone to the airport and left me there,” Palomares said.

Another gymnast’s mother eventually drove Palomares to the airport and got her
to her gate, she said. The parent confirmed the incident to The Post. But even
when she arrived there, Palomares said, Marinova would not speak to her.

The “silent treatment” could last for days or even weeks after a mistake, many
gymnasts said. And Marinova and Akopyan also used it to punish gymnasts who were
injured, many gymnasts said. Freidin recalled them forbidding her from talking
to teammates who were sitting out with injuries, asking, “Do you want to be lazy
like them?” When gymnasts fell and hurt themselves, gymnasts said, Marinova and
Akopyan would often simply turn their backs and walk away.

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“You’re on the floor, you’re bleeding or [something is] broken, and no one is
tending to you,” Garcia said.

Leaving All Olympia, though, did not feel like an option.

“There was a huge stigma of ‘quitting’ and being a ‘quitter’ and not being able
to handle it,” Garcia said. When girls left, she said, Akopyan and Marinova
would criticize them personally: “They would say you were a weak person if you
left.”

For many gymnasts, there was another factor at play: Their parents — even those
who were aware of Akopyan’s physical abuse — wanted them to stay.

“I was depressed,” Palomares said. “But they didn’t want me to leave, because
All Olympia was the gym to be at if you wanted to go to the Olympics.”

Her father said he regretted that he had missed signs of his daughter’s
distress. Desiree was “tough,” Rene Palomares said, because “we raised our
children to be tough.” But the more time she spent at All Olympia, he said, the
more withdrawn she became. “I wish I’d known then what I know now,” Rene said.

“Don’t look the other way. Don’t be afraid to pull them out,” he said. “It does
do a lot of psychological damage.”



AT THE 2012 OLYMPICS in London, with the Americans on the precipice of winning
their first team gold medal since 1996, Maroney’s near-perfect vault earned her
the highest score of any female gymnast at the Games. After she landed, the
16-year-old ran directly into Akopyan’s arms.

It was the latest in a string of high-profile wins for Akopyan and Marinova’s
athletes, cementing All Olympia as one of the country’s ascendant gyms.

Four years later, as she announced her retirement in 2016, Maroney praised
Akopyan and Marinova’s coaching on the GymCastic podcast. But they were, she
said, part of why she was leaving the sport.

“Artur changed my gymnastics, and I’m so forever grateful for that,” she said.
“But mentally, they just messed me up. Like, so badly. And I love them with all
my heart, but to speak my truth would to just be like — to really say that it
did affect me. And, again, there’s a better way of doing things.”

In response, Akopyan and Marinova were dismissive, even defiant. Akopyan told
GymCastic that he had “heard a few things she said and stopped listening.” They
could not, the coaches said, understand why Maroney would be critical of their
coaching. She had, after all, won an Olympic medal.

A few months later, the Indianapolis Star broke the news of allegations of
sexual abuse by Nassar. Maroney and Larson would eventually come forward as
victims.

Larson did not respond to a request for comment through her attorney. But four
gymnasts told The Post that Larson, who trained at All Olympia from the day it
opened, was long one of the primary targets of Akopyan’s abuse. And when Larson
sued Nassar and USA Gymnastics, she sued Akopyan and Marinova, too, accusing
them of fueling an “abusive, harassing, and degrading environment” at All
Olympia that had contributed to Nassar’s abuse. As a minor at the Karolyi Ranch
facility, where Nassar abused her, Larson alleged she had been partially under
the care of Marinova and Akopyan.



In court filings, Akopyan and Marinova said that they had not been aware of or
responsible for Nassar’s conduct and that they had not owned the facilities
where Larson was abused. They also argued that they were not responsible because
Larson had “failed to mitigate damages” inflicted by Nassar.

After settling Larson’s suit, they announced they would close one gym location
and step back from coaching. In their letter to parents, they wrote, “We believe
that we are two of the greatest coaches in gymnastics.”

In 2020, Freidin read about the allegations against Maggie Haney, the coach who
was suspended by USA Gymnastics for abuse, and thought immediately of her
childhood at All Olympia. She wrote on Instagram in May 2020 that she, too, had
endured “constant body shaming, pinching, throwing, yelling [and] degrading.”

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Freidin said she hoped to get the same kind of justice that Haney’s gymnasts
did. She went to SafeSport in 2020, emails she provided to The Post show, and
gave investigators a list of people who might speak — including DeShazo, who
said she had witnessed Akopyan throwing the gymnast. DeShazo said she does not
remember being contacted by a SafeSport investigator. (SafeSport said in its
statement that if a witness doesn’t hear from the center, “it’s generally due to
our not having correct contact information.”)

In 2022, emails show, SafeSport closed the case administratively, ending its
investigation. SafeSport has come under fire for high numbers of administrative
closures, which allow the center to claim it has “resolved” a case while
reserving the right to reopen the investigation if new evidence arises. When
cases are administratively closed, governing bodies are prohibited, usually
indefinitely, from conducting their own investigations because it would inhibit
SafeSport’s ability to reopen a case.

The SafeSport investigator told Freidin that it could not substantiate her case,
she said. Not enough women, he said, wanted to talk.



IT WAS PARENTS WHO BEGGED Marinova and Akopyan to return to coaching.

Nicole Grant’s daughter was thriving at All Olympia before it closed in 2018:
“She looked at all the banners on the walls, all the trophies, all the national
championship trophies all the way around the gym and around the lobby, and she
was like, ‘Yeah, that’s what I want.’”

So the summer after the coaches stepped back, Grant said she called Marinova.
“We said, ‘Will you take the kids back?’ And she did.”

The result was a revival, of sorts, for All Olympia. Though its new crop of
gymnasts, who train at its location in Calabasas, still have not reached the
heights of more than a decade ago, some have signed Division I scholarships and
competed internationally. An annual competition co-hosted by the gym in Las
Vegas drew more than 1,000 competitors in February.

“I never expected the program to be anything other than what it is,” Grant said:
intense, highly competitive and demanding. For her daughter, who was a junior
elite gymnast last year, that has been the perfect environment, she said. But
that isn’t true for every child, she said.

“I’ve heard the complaints,” Grant said, and many of the parents fit into the
same category: “They don’t want that level of intensity.”

Grant and two other parents whose daughters returned to All Olympia after its
closure said they had never seen any physical or emotional abuse. They had never
seen Akopyan appear inebriated or drink alcohol around children, they said.

Grant said she was “not discounting anyone or denying someone’s experience.” But
she expressed doubts about the allegations against Akopyan, including that he
had slapped a child.

“Every gym I’ve been in with them has cameras,” she said. “If that really
happened, I mean, trust me — there would be letters to USA Gymnastics — which,
we know those go nowhere. … But what about police?”

She was skeptical, too, she said, that parents would keep their children in a
gym if they were aware of such behavior. “There’s absolutely no way if that was
going on in the gym that I would have my child there,” she said.



FOR YEARS, FREIDIN ASSUMED SafeSport’s lack of findings meant she was alone. She
tried to avoid following All Olympia on social media, she said, and hoped
Akopyan was no longer coaching.

But then she saw the Instagram post of Akopyan with a young gymnast, gardening
gloves on his hands.

Freidin is in recovery from an eating disorder, she said, after seeking
inpatient treatment. But even now, small triggers take her back to the way she
felt at All Olympia as a child — trapped and afraid. “I’ll see their cars, the
same model they used to drive, and if it’s driving behind me, I’ve had to pull
over,” Freidin said.

All of the women who spoke to The Post said they believed Akopyan should not be
coaching children. Nor should Marinova, most said. And they were angry that no
one had done anything to stop them.

“It makes me furious,” Garcia said. “The fact that they’re able to continue to
operate and make money and profit is disgusting to me.”

Akopyan and Marinova “are not going to change unless they have some spiritual or
religious awakening,” Jones said. “And there haven’t been enough precautions or
measures taken to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.”

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Some former gymnasts said they believed their parents, too, bore some of the
responsibility for what happened to them in the gym.

“Unfortunately for all of us that were training at that gym, our parents knew
exactly what was happening,” said one of the gymnasts who witnessed the 2010
dragging incident that was investigated by police. “Everybody knew, but they
still brought their kids to that gym.”

“Why?” she said, before answering her own question: “Because everybody was
winning.”

Gus Garcia-Roberts in Los Angeles and Emily Giambalvo in Washington contributed
to this report.

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