Abuse in competitive sports: Two gymnasts and their coaches

Kaylia Nemour and Helen Kevric have a few things in common: Both young women are excellent gymnasts, both particularly on the uneven bars. At the World Championships in Rotterdam they will meet in the final on the Holmen this Saturday. The 2024 Olympic champion, Nemour, is clearly the favorite, the reigning European champion, Kevric, is very ambitious.

What they also have in common beyond the parallel bars: Both have been mentored in the past by trainers against whom serious allegations of psychological and physical abuse have been made. The athletes and especially the associations have to deal with something like this. And that's where the similarities end.

Review: Five years ago, the disputes between the French Gymnastics Federation and the Avoine-Beamont club escalated, where Nemour was looked after by Marc Chirilcenko and his wife Gina - once a gymnast herself in Romania - and Kaylia's mother was the club president. The result: Nemour, who has an Algerian father, applies for a change in starting right.

When she qualified for the Olympic Games in Paris for Algeria two years later, the gymnastics association FFGym was hit by an unprecedented shitstorm: How can you let the biggest Olympic hope go? FFGym explained at the time that its task was to ensure the protection of children – Olympic medal or not. Nemour becomes Olympic champion for Algeria, coached by Marc Chirilcenko.

In that Olympic final in the summer of 2024, Helen Kevric, just 16 years old at the time, came sixth, coached by Giacomo Camiciotti, under whom she trained at the Stuttgart federal base. The question of whether those responsible in the German Gymnastics Federation (DTB) already had information about abusive behavior at the time of his nomination has not yet been finally clarified.

The allegations became public at the end of the year: humiliation, threats, terror, training and competitions with injuries including broken bones, eating disorders and depression. In the wake of the statements made by many courageous young women, it also became known that the DTB and the Swabian Gymnastics Federation (STB) had had similar descriptions from Stuttgart since spring 2021.

This time, however, those responsible took action: the trainers were suspended and the regional association terminated their employment contracts. The DTB signed Aimee Boorman for the Stuttgart base: The American, who taught gymnastics to superstar Simone Biles, aggressively argues that it is primarily about the development of young people into personalities, not about medals.

Helen Kevric will take a position on all of this for the first time in the spring of 2025: She is not a “victim of abuse,” she says, she wants her “trainers back,” and the whole thing is “unfair.” And she doesn't want to train with Aimee Boorman. After a year, the DTB separated from the American in March, despite a contract until 2028: the collaboration “did not work as desired,” it is said.

Helen Kevric says she is currently training ten days a month in Vercelli, Italy. The head coach there worked with Giacomo Camiciotti until 2017. The DTB confirms that it supports these stays financially. He denies persistent rumors that father Adnan Kevric is threatening the association with a change in starting rights - he comes from Bosnia.

According to Helen Kevric in the summer, she wants a coach “who can keep up with my level” – and there is no doubt who she is thinking of. When she became European parallel bars champion in August, she didn't give an answer to the question of who wrote her training programs.

Also in spring 2025, Kaylia Nemour separated from her trainer Marc Chirilcenko. "I understood that I won this beautiful Olympic medal because I accepted the unacceptable," she told the French sports newspaper L'Équipe: "When you're in there, you don't know anything, you don't see anything. It was our whole life, it seemed normal." But she realized that there was another way.

The Olympic champion, like several other former gymnasts and parents, testified before the French authorities. The allegations are similar to those from Stuttgart - and also from the rest of the world. The French association bans the Chirilcenkos, even though they are once again training a great talent.

“No medal will ever justify silence, compromise or suffering,” explained FFGym President Dominique Merieux, who apparently does not leave it up to minors to decide whether there is an abuse of power or not. The public prosecutor's investigations against Marc and Gina Chirilcenko, who have now been hired in Qatar, are ongoing.

In Germany, too, the Stuttgart public prosecutor's office continues to investigate Giacomo Camiciotti and Marie-Luise Mai, in 25 cases for coercion and various bodily harm crimes; also for failure to act against DTB President Alfons Hölzl, sports director Thomas Gutekunst and seven other current and former employees or officials of the associations.

The employment law disputes between both coaches, however, recently ended with a settlement in the second instance. The Swabian Gymnastics Association pays severance payments, and Camiciotti is no longer allowed to enter the artistic gymnastics forum in Stuttgart. She is very happy about the end of the legal dispute, said Kevric before leaving for the World Cup, her goal is “that I can train again under the people I trust”.

The search for a training facility in Germany is currently underway. Shortly before the World Cup, the DTB did not respond to the question of whether it supported such a resumption of training or whether it intended to prevent it. The goal is “to find the best possible solution together with the athlete regarding her training situation and support,” it simply says, and the association stands “unreservedly” by its Safe Sport Code.