This episode has been commissioned by Club Gym Nerd members The Participation Sisters, who requested an episode called No-No Nunnoisms: The Era of Larger-Than-Life Coaches (and why it needed to end). Disclaimer: We're going to laugh about some of this stuff, and we also know Bela is horrible.

• Is Bela Karolyi patient zero for this kind of gymnastics coaching?
• Inside the belief that you needed an impassioned man to coach you to Olympic success (barf barf barf barf barf), and then the times when that was (sigh) actually true.
• NBC's obsession with Bela Karolyi
  • That horrific 1996 fluff piece on Kerri Strug — His defeat? The only man who could make her dreams come true? That boat-rowing methodology? OH HELL NO.
  • "Bela's girls"
  • Obviously, Spencer can't resist talking about that creep-burger 1995 Moceanu fluff or crazy 1992 articles
• Exaggerating the important of coaches by minimizing the athletes as "little girls," even when they're adults
• Bela and Nunno and the 1992 Trials war of words
• What have we (or should we have) learned from that era about the culture of the sport
• Have we come out of the era of larger-than-life coaches?

FURTHER READING

• Things Are Happening – June 14, 2019
• I Don't Like Sheep – The Downgraded Elements
• American Classic Rosters
• The Japan Problem

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