Bela Karolyi, the charismatic but polarizing gymnastics coach who turned young women into champions and turned the United States into an international power, has died. He was 82.
A spokesperson for USA Gymnastics confirmed to CBS News in an email that Karolyi died Friday. No cause of death was given.
Karolyi and wife Martha trained multiple Olympic gold medalists and world champions in the US and Romania, including Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton.
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“A big impact and influence on my life,” Comaneci, who was just 14 when Karolyi coached her to gold for Romania at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, posted on Instagram.
The Karolyis defected to the United States in 1981 and became a leading force in USA Gymnastics over the next thirty years. not without controversy. Bela helped Retton – all 16 – to the Olympic all-around title at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles and memorably helped an injured Kerri Strug off the floor at the 1996 Games in Atlanta after Strug’s jump secured the team gold for the Americans.
Karolyi briefly became the national team coordinator for USA Gymnastics’ elite women’s program in 1999, integrating a semi-centralized system that eventually made the Americans the gold standard of the sport. It didn’t happen without cost. He was kicked out after the 2000 Olympics after several athletes spoke out about his tactics.
It wouldn’t be the last time Karolyi was accused of grandstanding and pushing his athletes too far physically and mentally.
During the height of the Larry Nassar scandal late 2010s – when the disgraced former USA Gymnastics team doctor was effectively given a life sentence after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting gymnasts and other athletes with his hands under the guise of medical treatment — more than a dozen former gymnasts came forward and said the Karolyis were part of a system That created an oppressive culture that allowed Nassar’s behavior to continue unchecked for years.
The Karolyis ran a USA Gymnastics training center in Huntsville, Texas, known as the Karolyi Ranch. USA Gymnastics terminated his agreement with the Karolyi Ranch in January 2018.
In one Interview May 2018 Speaking to CBS News, former U.S. national team gymnasts Jamie Dantzscher and Jeanette Antolin said they were sexually abused by Nassar for years, often during training at the Karolyi Ranch.
“They had to have known. They knew everything else about everything else we did,” Dantzscher said at the time.
“If they didn’t know we were being abused, they still knew an adult man entered a child’s room alone at night,” Jeanette Antolin added.
Yet some of Karolyi’s most famous students were always among his staunchest defenders. When Strug got married, she and Karolyi took a photo recreating their famous scene from the 1996 Olympics, when he carried her to the medal podium after she jumped on a badly sprained ankle.
