On the Shelf book review
Lynette Olson, Special to The Gazette
Saturday, August 2, 2008
“This is a story about the ups and downs of my life as an internationally competitive athlete; as a young girl growing up in a world where underage and underweight girls were looked upon as cultural icons; as a fierce competitor in a culture where second place means losing; as a onetime winner who wasn’t going to win anymore.” — Jennifer Sey in the introduction
“Chalked Up: Inside Elite Gymnastics’ Merciless Coaching, Overzealous Parents, Eating Disorders, and Elusive Olympic Dreams” by Jennifer Sey may be intended to be the author’s story of her journey to the Olympics, but the book tells us about the side of gymnastic competition that we suspected has always existed.
Jennifer Sey began competing in gymnastics at the age of six and went on to become 1986 National Gymnastics Champion and seven-time national team member. She tells how her natural competitiveness, which helped her become an elite athlete, turned destructive as she used self-inflicted pain to curb anxiety. Later, against her better judgment, she succumbed to coaches’ screams about “fat athletes” and developed an eating disorder. As she rose in the ranks, Sey writes, she became “somber, cheerless, totally dedicated, and grossly obsessive about her body.” Meanwhile, her parents, oblivious to these signs, cheerily drove her to daily five-hour practices (since she was 10.)
With each new sacrifice that her parents and brother made to support her, the stakes crept higher, hardening them all to gymnastics’ inherent physical and psychological damage. After claiming the U.S. title, Sey was “shell-shocked and exhausted,” suddenly robbed of her lifelong motivation. “I’d always been a fighter, a come-from-behind girl. Now that I was on top, the battle would be unwinnable.”
Sey writes with vivid, clear-eyed candor; she doesn’t blame others, instead feeling that all the pressure came from within. She clearly explains the politics of judging, how anorexic urgings develop, and the athlete’s mindset on both “good” and “bad” days. To this day, Sey is haunted by feelings of failure.
To listen to an interview with Jennifer Sey and Neal Conan of NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” go to the Web site: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90105904. The program is entitled “Elite Gymnastics Not All It’s ‘Chalked Up’ to Be” and was recorded on (May 1, 2008.