Ivana, like many other young gymnasts, moved to Blue Springs to train with Al Fong, who has built up his Gage Gym to national prominence.
At age 11, Ivana left her father behind in California, coming to Blue Springs with her mother and three siblings to train with Fong. It is a decision the Hong family says they regret.
In a gym, Fong looks the part of a master motivator especially through the eyes of a teenage girl.
“I was kind of intimidated by him,” Ivana told NBC Action News. “I always saw him at camps when I was really little."
Intimidated or not, Ivana thought she needed Fong’s tough love to make the Olympics.
Fong coached two silver medalists in 2004 and Ivana seemed destined to become his next big success story.
For four years, Ivana trained under Fong. Just four months before Olympic trials, her ankle started hurting.
The 15-year-old says she tried to tell her coach, but he wouldn’t listen.
“They kept telling me that nothing was wrong with my foot,” Ivana said. “I knew what was wrong with it, but I wasn’t going to be like ‘I have a fracture in my foot and I’m not gonna train.’”
Fong discouraged Ivana from seeking medical treatment. Against his wishes, Ivana’s mother took her to a doctor, who confirmed she had a fractured ankle.
With the Olympics looming, Ivana thought she had no choice but to trudge on.
She finished fifth in the team trials, earning an invite to the team’s selection camp.
Her lifelong dream was still in reach, but it had become clear her fractured ankle had fractured her relationship with her coach.
Ivan’s mother says Fong simply stopped instructing her daughter.
“She wasn’t being coached,” Michelle Hong says, “And I don’t know what I was paying for.”
Fong says Ivana gave up. He refused an on-camera interview, but told NBC Action Sports “It became blatant she flat-out quit. It was almost as we were taken down a deep dark path.”
That path ended with Ivana just missing an Olympic bid.
“Just because I wasn’t crying at the very moment they named the team, they think I don’t really care whether I made it or not,” Ivana says. “I was just trying to keep it all in and now it feels like maybe if I did something or if they did something different, it wouldn’t have ended up this way.”
vana says Fong’s tough love became too tough to take. Ivana soon left Gage Gym and is now conducting a national search for a gym where she will train for the 2012 Olympics.
Her foot still has not healed and some of the pain from her experience might never go away.
“It didn’t end up as big as I wanted it to, but I don’t want to regret for the rest of my life moving here.”
Sadly, this is a common tale in the gymastics world.
A few years ago, a book was written on the subject titled “Little Girls in Pretty Boxes.” That book mentions Al Fong and how two of his former gymnasts died.
One was paralyzed in a training accident; the other died from organ failure after a bout with an eating disorder, which she said Fong contributed to with name-calling.
Fong denied repeated requests from NBC Action Sports for an interview, saying he wanted to focus on the future and the promising gymnasts he has left at his gym.
Hmm... I'm beginning to wonder, is he really a "Bela" type coach. I kind of gave him the benefit of the doubt with Henrich, and McCool and Humphrey never let on any complaints. But then again, i'm wondering are more caoches than I originally thought, or all coaches, like this?
