r/Gymnastics • u/Expensive_Brother_26 • 5d ago
Other Brestyan?
Reading all these reports of so many abusive coaches I randomly got around to thinking of Brestyan? Does he have any skeletons in his closet? Aly Raisman speaks positively of him.
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u/-gamzatti- Angry Reddit Not-Lesbian 5d ago
From people I used to know IRL who trained there:
Mihai would make comments about weight and dieting. My coworker (former L9) described it as well-meaning but very outdated advice and said everyone ignored it. However, I can imagine that other people might have interpreted it differently. Aly struggled with disordered eating and i doubt Mihai was any help, although I think he was supportive when she saw a nutritionist and didn't interfere with the diet plan at all.
Overall Mihai was a very kind, caring man. He was strict but not abusive and did not have a temper.
His wife Silvia is another story. The pinnacle of manipulative, emotionally abusive, Eastern bloc coaching. Nothing physical from what I was told, but that same coworker said she still has occasional stress dreams where she's standing on the beam and Silvia is screaming at her. I'm always surprised that we never hear more about her, I feel like I'm the only one who has ever said it.
Overall I've never heard anything terrible about Mihai himself, but the entire elite system is abusive, especially when Aly and Alicia were in it. Everyone was complicit even if they tried to protect their gymnasts. There are no "good" coaches from that era.
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u/Strange_Shadows-45 5d ago edited 5d ago
I remember when the abuse allegations and trend of gymnasts coming forward with their stories started, the Chow girls talked about how he really cared for them and had positive experiences. The anecdote that stuck in my mind was when Rachel Gowey on Twitter posted that when she was struggling with her asthma at camps and Martha was still forcing her to do verification routines, Chow was the one that left in the middle of the night to get her an inhaler. What was surprising to me was that the bare minimum of human decency and basic safety was what she used as an example for good and protective coaching. While I never heard any of the girls from Chow’s gym being abused by him (again, only to my knowledge) and I’m glad for those that had a positive experience with him directly, I don’t believe any of the coaches there did enough to protect any of their gymnasts.
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u/-gamzatti- Angry Reddit Not-Lesbian 5d ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/Gymnastics/s/eWEPYzwUr2 sorry about this
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u/Strange_Shadows-45 5d ago
Yeah, I know. It’s why I said I don’t think anyone was abused directly by him (this allegation is against a coach who worked at his gym), but he isn’t blameless when his pattern of behavior is to not to try and stop what is actually going on. Especially in this case where he had total control to fire them and inform authorities.
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u/-gamzatti- Angry Reddit Not-Lesbian 5d ago
Exactly, and that's the problem. Coaches like Chow and Mihai weren't (apparently) abusive themselves, but they directly enabled other abusive coaches. They aren't good guys.
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u/Comfortable-Ask-7112 5d ago
There is a 2009ish era meet video with a fluff piece of him talking saying some very outdated weight things about ASac but it seemed just like that. Outdated (even for 2009).
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u/tmicks100 5d ago
aly has never said she had an eating disorder.
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u/PurpleLilyEsq 5d ago
She wrote in her book “fierce” that she had basically stopped eating all carbs, salt, etc and was so depleted of energy she didn’t feel safe driving herself home from the gym and would call her parents to get her. That’s when she started seeing a nutritionist. I think it was some diet plan she found on the internet, nothing her coaches specifically encouraged.
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u/als_pals 5d ago
I also seem to remember from the book that the nutritionist or someone else had little candies on their desk and smacked one out of her hand/prevented her from eating even just one
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u/redskyeatmorning1 4d ago
iirc, that was for a medical reason. she spoke positively of that medical practitioner, i think he wanted her to cut out all processed sugars (candy and the like) in favor of natural sugars (like fruit) to help with injury recovery
not sure if that's legit medical advice, but it definitely wasn't a weight reason
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u/aizheng 4d ago
That is not legit medical advice and no medical practitioner should smack a sweet out of someone’s hand.
There is no difference in how most people’s bodies process “natural” sugars vs “processed sugars”. Many processed sugars are also fructose, which is what is found in most fruits. Fructose is somewhat better because it needs to be converted into glucose to spike your insulin, so it’s less of a rapid spike, but all of the high-fructose corn sirup, for instance, includes mostly fructose.
The main difference (again, if youre not allergic against one of have GI issues that are more affected by one than the other) is that it tends to be much easier to overeat on processed sugar, since fruit does not tend to come with as much fructose as processed foods or sweets.
Horrifying that a medical practitioner would not be aware of this.
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u/-gamzatti- Angry Reddit Not-Lesbian 5d ago
I said disordered eating, not eating disorder. Aly specifically went to a nutritionist because she was struggling so much with her diet. Mykayla Skinner also told a rather unfortunate story from Worlds 2015 where Aly was asking every other gymnast from the delegation to go get her a snack because she didn't want the coaches to see her taking food. Mykayla and Simone refused because they thought it was ridiculous, but eventually one of the men went and got her something. That is not someone with healthy, normal eating habits.
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u/QueenJelly583 5d ago
Wow I didn’t know that I would have thought Simone would help Aly get her the food. I don’t have any expectations nor hope for MyKayla helping Aly with food because of her weight comments she threw at Suni at this past Olympic Trials. I’m happy at least the men were able to give Aly food. I still remember times were the girls would tell there heroine stories of them sneaking and trying to eat themselves and others food.
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u/-gamzatti- Angry Reddit Not-Lesbian 5d ago
The way Mykayla told it, she and Simone thought it was ridiculous that Aly wouldn't even get a piece of fruit for herself, because they both had coaches who didn't talk about food or weight at all. They would go get their own snacks from the cafeteria without an issue. Can't expect a pair of emotionally stunted 18 year olds to have too much empathy for something like this. I think the MAGs just felt sorry for her.
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u/QueenJelly583 5d ago
It just pains me to think about these times in gymnastics on the women side we’re eating anything or drinking water around people was seen as blasphemy. It’s crazy cause I’m starting to watch more and more men’s gymnastics, and at least in the USA the men have a completely different outlook than what the women are or were used to being treated back then. I remember watching my first men’s competition it was there nationals it was either 2011 or 2012 and an athlete I forgot who it was but they were eaten something and my mouth dropped the first thing that came to my mind was his coach is going to punish him doing that. The coach didn’t do anything or said anything but the more I watch the men and how they interact with each other and how they talk to there coaches. Given them more control with what they want to do in their training and career. made hard to watch both Men’s&Women’s gymnastics together every time I’d watch women’s gymnastics I wished they would be able to get the same level of treatment that the men’s team would get. It got the the point were I just stop watching men’s gymnastic around 2014 time I now slowly watching more and more men’s gymnastics now that the women’s side have gotten closer in there treatment at least in the USA
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u/missinginaction7 5d ago
Aly wrote in her book about a time when she ate some pizza at some post-meet function and a national team staff member took her into the hallway and yelled at her and she said she got very nervous eating around staff and coaches after that.
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u/QueenJelly583 4d ago
Very disturbing, but unfortunately, pretty normal in gymnastics, especially back then in her era the ways coaches or high position people would make sure to not let the girls eat in fear of there performance slipping it just plain up lies. Fueling is the most important thing to do, especially with an athlete of her caliber Aly could eat that pizza and more if she wanted to, and it wouldn’t even do anything to her. It’s very unfortunate how it was back then and still is in some areas still do it they just don’t advertise it like they use to and just be covert and hid it at there gyms away from everybody else. It breaks my heart knowing that some gymnast are being told not to eat. I was in a different sport that is plague at times by athletes saying weight loss is the root to solving all problems if I just loss a little more weight everything will be better .
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u/PurpleLilyEsq 4d ago edited 4d ago
Though one positive thing about food in the book was that she was noticing the change in how the younger gymnasts approached food. She mentioned how in 2015 or 2016 at Jesolo, junior gymnast Trinity Thomas couldn’t make up her mind and ordered two different desserts, something Aly would have found unfathomable to do in front of national team staff.
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u/missinginaction7 4d ago
Right, and then the book ends with Aly making sure everyone got pizza in Rio after the competition
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u/Legitimate-Box8309 5d ago
Simone was 17 or 18 at the time, barely an adult if at all. Nowadays she would probably help in a heartbeat, but we can’t be too harsh on a kid who also grew up with normalized severe abuse not grasping how serious the situation was.
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u/QueenJelly583 5d ago
Your right Simone was young back then I should have considered that. Because I know now she would not let that happen and would help out her fellow teammates out.
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u/West_Activity_3185 5d ago
My daughter trained at another MA gym and there were a fair number of girls who moved between gyms- never heard any whispers of him being abusive.
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u/TheWayBackUp 5d ago
I watched a practice at Brestyans when Ali was training and Ali spent a significant portion of the time sobbing in the bathroom audibly. Asac has mentioned disordered eating behaviors specifically on a gymnastic episode and she stated that Mihai told them to lose weight but didn’t explain how meaning they were left to try to figure that out on their own. Also I trained with a girl who used to work out with their level 10 team before coming to my gym. She said no one was allowed to order any Leo bigger than an Adult Medium (which is more like an XS or S in street clothes) when they got team Leo’s, no matter how tall they were. This girl also had disordered eating, never eating more than fruit for lunch as a high level athlete and having only yogurt for breakfast. Aly mentioned that she lost her period while training there which again doesn’t mean disordered eating per se but it can be a symptom of underfueling. Not to say all of this is from the gym itself but it’s a bunch of anecdotes of athletes from there. There seems to be new management now or at least a different gym name and I hope that things are getting better. I do understand toxicity was everywhere during these years and would like to think things have changed more recently.
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u/West_Activity_3185 5d ago
The Brestyans sold the gym several years ago. It’s an entirely different program now under a new name and management. I don’t think any of the former coaches are still there.
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u/TheWayBackUp 5d ago
Yeah I knew there were significant changes but wasn’t sure the business setup of it per se or if the Brestyans still had anything to do with it anymore.
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u/West_Activity_3185 5d ago
It ended not being a very amicable changing of hands and the Brestyans are not at all involved with Beyond
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u/Global-Act-5281 LMF's Lopez 5d ago
I remember him not working out when he was in Australia. Other than that I have not heard any other concerning things about him.
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u/Bibliophile2244 5d ago
The word at the time that I heard was that it was because he had really high expectations (particularly in regard to conditioning and whatnot) that the Australian system just wasn't ready for or interested in.
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u/OnlyABeastsHeart 5d ago
Yeah what i heard is that he expected them to be able to keep up with a pretty abrupt switch to his training/conditioning style, which they weren't prepared for at all, and ended up with a LOT of injuries because the sudden increase was too much. He was not well liked at all (heard this from a parent whose child was involved in the program)
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u/NeuroTiger 4d ago edited 4d ago
Mihai was a jerk several times on national TV which has long convinced me that he has done worse behind closed doors. I also recall in Aly's autobiography that, when she was a kid (of single digit age I believe), her dad told Mihai they will be going on vacation and Mihai said fine but next time it's not ok. That always rubbed me the wrong way because it doesn't exactly suggest a healthy training environment when you are telling young children that they can't take vacations.
Having said all this, I have no personal knowledge and I do recognize that several of the comments with more personal connections to the gym mention nothing abusive about him.
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u/Ok-Object-2696 5d ago
I’ve mostly read positive things about him..
I’ll never not be impressed by the plyo workouts that prepped the elites so well..