I haven't read the book, but I've seen the documentary a few years ago. I think part of the problem is that her mom seems not exactly an empathic person and she was her coach. Gabriella seems not to have had much spare time in her childhood. Her dad didn't live with them. Her mom said that when she and Guillaume left for Lyons, she lost her "project". Please don't jump to conclusions and judge, her mom raised her alone, taught her everything she could, and paired her with the best boy in town, but that's probably not quite enough, and I did get a feeling that Guillaume's were a more united family that could provide a bit more support for him. They were connected to the rink as well - management or owners - I forget. Point is, it's a small town more like a village, and being used to a mixture of parent/coach/management roles, it might be unsurprising that having moved to a big city, she couldn't un-mix them and expected something like a bit of parenting from her coaching staff, who acted like business partners normally do. They didn't do anything bad to her, they did what they were supposed to do. I think that Maya's summary is probably not too far and kinda in sync with what I saw.
There is a lot more to it. I haven't read the book, but Gabby says in the documentary, that Tessa came to every practice with a perfect hairdo and make-up, even if a practice started at 6 am, and Gabby couldn't find any joy in doing this, and didn't think it fair to have to get up in the middle of the night to do her face and hair even for competitions, wondering why she couldn't be like Tessa. She said it would be nice to have a stylist to do these things. There is an episode where Madi (Hubbell) does her make-up. Madi seems to take it in a stride, like many women do, some can't even imagine leaving home without a makeup, but Gabby didn't. It's a sexist sport in a lot of ways. One of them is that a man can wear anything they like except maybe flesh-coloured nylon tights (actually I am not sure if rules forbid it, but no-one does): a frilly blouse, a corset, or a flannel shirt+jeans, but a woman has to look like a woman, dress like a woman, act like a woman, be made-up like a woman. Not all women find this pleasant or interesting, for some it's downright burdensome. If you look at how she walks, what she wears off-ice, her current hairdo, it tells a lot about her personality. Given that in childhood she did a lot of her mom's bidding without receiving a lot of motherly support, and looking at other girls who have no trouble being women, and her partner, who pretty much did what he wanted all his life (it's not his fault, it just happened that he actually wanted to skate much more than she did, and his parents said: sure, fine), it's easy to ask oneself what's wrong with one. I hope I am making sense. I actually think it's pretty normal to hope your competition falls. Even in music: Kalkbrenner offering Chopin 3-year apprenticeship and Elsner thinking he offered it out of envy and advising against it turned out correct. People thinking: this dude is too talented, if we let him he'll put us out of business, etc. Even in regular workplace people think this. I think, you focused on the wrong part of the story. But I am not going to read the book either, although for a different reason: I have a reading list already much bigger that my free time allows.
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