Amazing Gracie Gold article in NYT

[satine]

Sure, the best way to help someone move on from their mental struggle is to interview them about their various rationalisations about it and then write a gigantic sob story, where the whole tragedy is made to seem even more monumental. Who even wants to read this sort of inept pseudojournalism?
I don't think this situation with Gracie (or Gabby) will resolve itself until they stop fixating on what has been and what the possible reasons for it might have been and just accept that things are the way they are and sometimes you just have to recover from a massive trainwreck.

What about getting the opportunity to be honest, raw, & own her struggles instead of having inaccurate article after article written about her, laced with half-truth quotes from Gracie herself?
I don't know if this was therapeutic for Gracie, but I can see how this could be helpful to someone in the public eye.

 

[Koatterce]

Gracie shared the article
https://twitter.com/GraceEGold/status/1089583946487250950

Being honest about my story is so freeing. Thank you Karen for helping me tell it. It is my hope to show future athletes that they are never alone, and it is always okay to ask for help.

 

[evasorange]

This article really highlighted two things for me, one how much human beings will hold onto something that is causing them so much pain. Why is it so much easier to keep holding on even when you know it is literally killing you, then to just cut the cord and walk away? I truly hope Gracie can find another outlet that brings her joy amd she can support herself on, and walks from the one that almost caused her death. And two, how the people and culture around her really contributed to her decline. Shame on her coach(has to be frank carrol right?) who told her that 124 pounds was “a big number” that’s a perfectly acceptable weight for her age and height and I would expect a trained professional coach to know that. Also her moms comment about worlds 2016 really(inadvertently I think) shines a light on how it wasn’t just Gracie herself putting pressure on “It was her family’s pain. It was her agents pain. It was the countries pain.” Like let’s be real here-90 percent of the country couldn’t pick Gracie Gold out of a lineup, and from the 10 percent that could, not all of them were even rooting for her to win. It’s no wonder she fell apart if that was the mindset of those closest to her.

 

[isk82]

Thank you for sharing this article. It took a lot of courage for Gracie to speak up about this. This is such an accurate description of depression; hoping someone will notice that she needs help without outwardly asking for it, isolating herself, turning to food for immediate comfort and then hating what it did to her. I'm so glad she got help. It's a lifelong process. Someone else mentioned, I think, that it doesn't even matter if she returns to skating. I agree. She can still have a rewarding and rich life pursuing other avenues and not have that intense pressure for perfection. It seems as though she is a perfectionist no matter what she is doing, but skating adds additional pressure. Wishing her the best going forward. Such a brave young lady.

 

[cruzceleste]

Sure, the best way to help someone move on from their mental struggle is to interview them about their various rationalisations about it and then write a gigantic sob story, where the whole tragedy is made to seem even more monumental. Who even wants to read this sort of inept pseudojournalism?
I don't think this situation with Gracie (or Gabby) will resolve itself until they stop fixating on what has been and what the possible reasons for it might have been and just accept that things are the way they are and sometimes you just have to recover from a massive trainwreck.

The fact that people, specially those under pressure or in the spotlight, feel they can´t face their problems in public, it is more difficult to accept the help they need, and to accept they are not perfect. Michael Phelps, Ian Thorpe and other Olympians struggle with normal life because they feel the need to always be extraordinary, to always be perfect and in the end all sport men and sport women are only humans.

Mental illness is something they will probably have to live with it all their lifes, probably they will fall again but if they accept it and people around them is aware of the situation they can get support...

 

[figurefan0726]

To all the people who are currently hating on Vincent Restencourt, he is actually a big part of Gracie’s life. He is helping her.

 

[musicfan80]

To all the people who are currently hating on Vincent Restencourt, he is actually a big part of Gracie’s life. He is helping her.

As long as Gracie finally has a healthy, positive relationship with a coach, I could care less what her competition results are.

 

[musicfan98]

I really do hope she gets better. Oftentimes, I think people find it so easy to criticize athletes over the smallest things without realizing that they may be going through something serious, which could contribute to their performances. Sports is as much a mental game as it is physical. It would have been nice to see her back at Nationals but she isn't physically or emotionally ready and that's okay. She doesn't need to prove anything to anyone.

 

[musicfan98]

There are some really interesting clues about Gracie's life experiences in this article. And not a lot of them have to do with a scale. I think the scale is the easiest thing to blame for eating disorders because we can take away the scale. But they don't cause them.

Psychology has long understood that perfectionist tendencies play a significant role in eating disorders--here's just one of many articles that pop up when you put perfectionism together with eating disorders into google. Most are scholarly research, in fact:

https://www.eatingdisorders.org.au/...an-eating-disorder/risk-factors/perfectionism

I was struck by the characterization that Gracie was the leader from birth. For whatever reason, her parents interpreted something in her personality this way, apparently as an infant. So they--perhaps subconsciously--put that onus on her for her entire life. And skating didn't make her a perfectionist--hence the crying primary student erasing a whole sentence for one error. As a teacher, I have seen those kids at 8 and 18 and ages between. I did my best to help them let go of it. In this story, it sounds like for Gracie, it became a cute family story of how driven she was. I've had that conversation with parents who don't see it as a bad thing or see it as a quirk. The smart perfectionist kid, even at 8, looks like she will be a high achiever and parents love for their kid to be a high achiever. Enter skating. Notice that the characterization, again, is that Gracie will be the high achiever and Carly will have fun. This seems to have been set in stone by then. She didn't --probably subconsciously on her parents's part--have permission to just have fun. The expectations were there before she reached the level with media pressure. So we have a Gracie that is already prone to believing she has to be the perfect high achiever in anything she does and live up to parental expectations because that's her role in the family.

Enter skating success and media. Ashley Wagner never tried to be anything the media said she should. (Much to the chagrin of fan boards where so many say they want authentic personalities not packaged skaters then get frustrated by authentic personalities...but I digress). She had neither the personality or perceived expectations of doing so. Gracie was different. The media and judges represented authority. Like her parents. She had to meet the expectations of the authorities. That is who she is and she does it perfectly. So the media creates a story around her--golden Hollywood girl who shall win the Olympics and World Championships. So she tries to be golden Hollywood girl but she doesn't win anything. (Really, people. can we lay "princess" to rest? They never said "princess", plus there are some bad *ss princesses in the world. I dare you to mess with Princess Anne who has no time for sparkles or red lipstick, either).

And here we are.

And today I read from Christine Brennan that Alysa Liu is a sparkling breath of fresh air and spunk that will be the "perfect age" at the 2022 Olympics. Yesterday, I saw multiple references to her winning those Olympics. We're off to the races... And we don't know who Alysa is or what kind of pressure she puts on herself or how growth and other changes between now and then will affect her. But let's crown another Olympic champion before she laces up her skates at the Games and see how it goes. No harm, right?

Gracie's parents pushed her into being a perfectionist once it became clear she wanted to do skating more than just a hobby. And clearly that messed her up mentally. NBC tried last year to push this perfectionist narrative with Bradie and it didn't work because she's human. This amount of pressure that the media puts on female athletes to be superhuman is unfair. I have to wonder how many other skaters deal with the same issues that Gracie mentioned.

 

[louisa05]

Gracie's parents pushed her into being a perfectionist once it became clear she wanted to do skating more than just a hobby. And clearly that messed her up mentally. NBC tried last year to push this perfectionist narrative with Bradie and it didn't work because she's human. This amount of pressure that the media puts on female athletes to be superhuman is unfair. I have to wonder how many other skaters deal with the same issues that Gracie mentioned.

I don't think that media pressure is exclusive to female athletes. Not at all. Go to any elite college football town and read and listen to how the local media writes about players. It can be downright ugly. And that's just one example.

 

[RobinA]

And here we are.

And today I read from Christine Brennan that Alysa Liu is a sparkling breath of fresh air and spunk that will be the "perfect age" at the 2022 Olympics. Yesterday, I saw multiple references to her winning those Olympics. We're off to the races... And we don't know who Alysa is or what kind of pressure she puts on herself or how growth and other changes between now and then will affect her. But let's crown another Olympic champion before she laces up her skates at the Games and see how it goes. No harm, right?

Yes, the history of prepubescent national champions is not an inspiring one. The best thing that happened to Michelle Kwan was that they didn't crown her in 2005. She got to sit there in the Kiss and Cry in her sombrero with her flowers and a girlish smile on her face. Alysa Liu

Ever time I hear the gushing for a new tiny skater I just think, How long have you been around skating?

 

[RobinA]

This article really highlighted two things for me, one how much human beings will hold onto something that is causing them so much pain. Why is it so much easier to keep holding on even when you know it is literally killing you, then to just cut the cord and walk away? I truly hope Gracie can find another outlet that brings her joy amd she can support herself on, and walks from the one that almost caused her death. And two, how the people and culture around her really contributed to her decline. Shame on her coach(has to be frank carrol right?) who told her that 124 pounds was “a big number” that’s a perfectly acceptable weight for her age and height and I would expect a trained professional coach to know that. Also her moms comment about worlds 2016 really(inadvertently I think) shines a light on how it wasn’t just Gracie herself putting pressure on “It was her family’s pain. It was her agents pain. It was the countries pain.” Like let’s be real here-90 percent of the country couldn’t pick Gracie Gold out of a lineup, and from the 10 percent that could, not all of them were even rooting for her to win. It’s no wonder she fell apart if that was the mindset of those closest to her.

I think it is difficult for us relatively "normal" people, or a better way of putting it might be those of us whose lives have followed a relatively traditional trajectory, to understand how difficult it is to give up the only life you have ever known from an extremely young age. Especially a life that is as all-encompassing as an elite sport. Generally, we grow up knowing high school will come to an end, maybe we get a job in something that has looked interesting to us as we have been growing up. Maybe we go to college and major in something we have encountered that we think might interest us. All our friends are at or around the same stage in life and experiencing the same issues. We shed friends and gain new ones at a pace that is more or less comfortable to us. We sweat the transitions, but barring a big upheaval, they do not come all at once. Even if we move far away from home, we usually have considered it and are doing it as at least a positive change.

Contrast this with training all your life for something, having people spending gobs of money on it on your behalf, you've defined success as one thing, you haven't been exposed to much else, all your friends are part of that life, all the things you do. One day you wake up to the realization that it is making you sick! I think it would be natural to try to figure out how you can maintain that status quo while changing some things to make it less sickening.

I also think it needs to be more recognized by figure skating fans that "normal, healthy weight" for a female of a certain age is not going to win a skater awards in elite figure skating. Or gymnastics, for that matter. Increasing jump demands will increasingly reward disordered eating in all but a very, very few individuals. The winners will increasingly be, if they aren't already, those that can walk the weight loss line without getting swamped.

 

[louisa05]

I also think it needs to be more recognized by figure skating fans that "normal, healthy weight" for a female of a certain age is not going to win a skater awards in elite figure skating. Or gymnastics, for that matter. Increasing jump demands will increasingly reward disordered eating in all but a very, very few individuals. The winners will increasingly be, if they aren't already, those that can walk the weight loss line without getting swamped.

There are girls who are naturally that thin. I was. At Gracie's age, I was 2 inches taller, weighed about 112-115 typically and was not an athlete at all. I couldn't gain an ounce if I tried until I was over 45 and remained under 130 lbs all the time. And even now, I've stayed at a size 8 at 5'7" and lost weight yet again due to being given the wrong medication seven months ago screwed with my appetite and metabolism. If it sticks, I'll need new clothes.

But that aside, sports require fitness and almost every sport requires a certain body type. You don't regularly see 5'4' NBA players. And that 6'4" kid that is a great center in high school? He's not playing that position in division 1 college where shooting guards average 6'3"+ and centers 6'9"+. And a 5'5", 145 lb guy isn't going to be playing high level football. What skating coaches need to learn is to pay attention to fitness levels over weight (which can be deceiving anyway)--muscle mass to fat ratio for example. My favorite college football team has been facing the muscle vs. fat issue as their previous coach and athletic director decided that there was no need for a nutrition program or to require off season weight training. By the beginning of last season after 8 months of better nutrition and training, players looked leaner and weighed more as they replaced fat with muscle. Skating coaches need to stop looking only at the scale and start looking at overall nutrition and fitness. They need the support of U.S. Figure Skating to do that but also of parents and a buy in from skaters. I think there is a culture in the sport to lose weight by extreme measures but it very well may be because skaters don't know any other way. Gracie wanted to take off weight and there were not resources at her fingertips about nutrition so she went to the extreme corners of the web. BUT seriously, we're talking about 6 lbs--the article is clear, she did that to get from 124 to 118. She clearly did not lose the muscle mass she needed to perform. If it had said 98 or even 108, well there's an issue.

For those criticizing Gracie for losing the 50 lbs she gained later (which I'm seeing everywhere...), you don't gain muscle mass by binge eating and she knows that, too.

 

[moonvine]

I also think it needs to be more recognized by figure skating fans that "normal, healthy weight" for a female of a certain age is not going to win a skater awards in elite figure skating. Or gymnastics, for that matter. Increasing jump demands will increasingly reward disordered eating in all but a very, very few individuals. The winners will increasingly be, if they aren't already, those that can walk the weight loss line without getting swamped.

This is why I love women’s collegiate gymnastics. The gymnastics is simpler than elite but with an emphasis on being clean, dance skills, etc rather than do the absolute hardest routines you can and it won’t matter if you step out of bounds or don’t stick your dismount. And honestly I have seen probably as many people at a college gymnastics meet as I did the men’s long. I was horrified by how few people were there. Mirai even said she believes there should be a collegiate path (I know collegiate skating exists but I’m sure she meant as a scholarship sport). Anyway the point is one can have more of a “normal” (though still slim, but not frighteningly thin) body type and succeed in college gymnastics.

I really wish the old pro circuit still existed, where ladies were skating beautifully, albeit simpler routines with fewer/easier jumps until well “up there” in age. But now that pros can compete in the Olympics and we can’t even fill an arena half full to see Nathan Chen and Jason Brown I don’t see that ever happening again.

 

[RobinA]

This is why I love women’s collegiate gymnastics. The gymnastics is simpler than elite but with an emphasis on being clean, dance skills, etc rather than do the absolute hardest routines you can and it won’t matter if you step out of bounds or don’t stick your dismount. And honestly I have seen probably as many people at a college gymnastics meet as I did the men’s long. I was horrified by how few people were there. Mirai even said she believes there should be a collegiate path (I know collegiate skating exists but I’m sure she meant as a scholarship sport). Anyway the point is one can have more of a “normal” (though still slim, but not frighteningly thin) body type and succeed in college gymnastics.

I really wish the old pro circuit still existed, where ladies were skating beautifully, albeit simpler routines with fewer/easier jumps until well “up there” in age. But now that pros can compete in the Olympics and we can’t even fill an arena half full to see Nathan Chen and Jason Brown I don’t see that ever happening again.

You are so right collegiate sports. Great point!

 

[apgold]

This article is today's printed edition.

 

[moonvine]

Yes, the history of prepubescent national champions is not an inspiring one. The best thing that happened to Michelle Kwan was that they didn't crown her in 2005. She got to sit there in the Kiss and Cry in her sombrero with her flowers and a girlish smile on her face. Alysa Liu

Ever time I hear the gushing for a new tiny skater I just think, How long have you been around skating?

I remember when Caroline Zhang, and so many others, were the “next Michelle Kwan.” Why can’t they let people be the first (whoever)? You’re either the next Michelle Kwan or, if you happen to be blonde, an “ice princess.” And OMG the politics. I’m glad I showed horses instead. At least they either jump over the jump or don’t jump over it. There aren’t any UR calls.

 

[jenaj]

Gracie's parents pushed her into being a perfectionist once it became clear she wanted to do skating more than just a hobby. And clearly that messed her up mentally. NBC tried last year to push this perfectionist narrative with Bradie and it didn't work because she's human. This amount of pressure that the media puts on female athletes to be superhuman is unfair. I have to wonder how many other skaters deal with the same issues that Gracie mentioned.

What basis is there to say her parents pushed her into it? It is all speculation. It isn't easy for a parent to affect a child's personality. Some might say it's impossible. More likely, Gracie had a perfectionist personality to begin with.

 

[jenaj]

Agree 100%. Just told my friend, "look, here we go again," with all the pressure being thrust onto Alysa Liu.

The saving grace for Alysa may be that she's not eligible to compete at the senior level for several years. The spotlight won't be on her very much. Of course, there is still Nationals, but again, there is less pressure on her because she won't be eligible for Worlds no matter what.

 

[Baron Vladimir]

There are some really interesting clues about Gracie's life experiences in this article. And not a lot of them have to do with a scale. I think the scale is the easiest thing to blame for eating disorders because we can take away the scale. But they don't cause them.

Psychology has long understood that perfectionist tendencies play a significant role in eating disorders--here's just one of many articles that pop up when you put perfectionism together with eating disorders into google. Most are scholarly research, in fact:

https://www.eatingdisorders.org.au/...an-eating-disorder/risk-factors/perfectionism

I was struck by the characterization that Gracie was the leader from birth. For whatever reason, her parents interpreted something in her personality this way, apparently as an infant. So they--perhaps subconsciously--put that onus on her for her entire life. And skating didn't make her a perfectionist--hence the crying primary student erasing a whole sentence for one error. As a teacher, I have seen those kids at 8 and 18 and ages between. I did my best to help them let go of it. In this story, it sounds like for Gracie, it became a cute family story of how driven she was. I've had that conversation with parents who don't see it as a bad thing or see it as a quirk. The smart perfectionist kid, even at 8, looks like she will be a high achiever and parents love for their kid to be a high achiever. Enter skating. Notice that the characterization, again, is that Gracie will be the high achiever and Carly will have fun. This seems to have been set in stone by then. She didn't --probably subconsciously on her parents's part--have permission to just have fun. The expectations were there before she reached the level with media pressure. So we have a Gracie that is already prone to believing she has to be the perfect high achiever in anything she does and live up to parental expectations because that's her role in the family.

Great post. You basically described the cause of eating disorders in a sports envirovment. So, if someone wants to know why Yulia, Gabby or other athletes had or will have problem with eating disorders or any other type of mental health, you can just quote this post, cause it explains the main reason of the problem very good :thumbsup: So, it has nothing to do with skaters being on a strictly diet (what many people wrongly assume), but with expectations they are dealing with. I mean, just read that post!