British Gymnastics chairman calls for government to establish independent safeguarding body

The chair of British Gymnastics has called for the government to establish an independent safeguarding body across all sports to “show we care as much about athlete welfare as we do about medal table success”.

Mike Darcey said national governing bodies have “neither the expertise nor resources” to handle abuse allegations, and that individuals involved in cases “wait too long for justice”.

“More needs to be done, and it needs to happen now, athletes and coaches are being let down,” he said.

British Gymnastics doubled its spending on welfare to about £1m a year after the bullying crisis that engulfed the organisation.

Last year’s landmark Whyte Review detailed “systemic” issues of physical and emotional abuse, with 1,326 concerns raised with the welfare team since 2020.

Darcey said British Gymnastics was making “good progress” but there were “challenges”.

“We love to watch our sporting heroes compete and triumph on the world stage, but we also expect that the pursuit of success is accompanied by high standards of athlete welfare,” he said.

“Sadly, many sporting bodies are struggling to deliver on these expectations, for reasons of resource, expertise and perceptions of bias. The solution is to establish a new independent body to ensure athlete welfare across all sports.

Darcey said “a backlog of historic complaints” was an “intractable challenge” and that British Gymnastics “is ill-equipped to handle these sorts of cases”.

“Gymnastics is not alone, and other sports have similar experiences,” he added.

“If investigation and the assessment of culpability for appropriate cases sat with a central body, the problems around perceptions of bias would be solved.”

Read more here https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/gymnastics/65609441