Buckeye Gymnastics,Inc.
5159 Northgate Way, Westerville, OH 43082 (614) 895-1611
10562 Sawmill Road, Powell, OH (614) 793-1936

A Response to Negative Gymnastics Stories In The Media: A Reply to the Today Show and to the release of the article, Gymnastics-related Injuries to Children Treated in Emergency Departments in the United States, 1990_2005, Shubha Singh, Gary A. Smith, Sarah K. Fields and Lara B. McKenzie, Pediatrics 2008;121;e954-e960 (hereinafter, “Injuries to Children”)

The Today Show

It must be fun to be a conman or woman. Don't have to tell the truth. Promise a gym and an owner some free local and national TV exposure and then ambush them. It must also be fun to not have to have integrity. Or to get the facts straight. And reach millions of people who won't take the time to make sure what they are hearing is even remotely true. It must be fun.

Think of the power of not having to be accountable. On Mon., April. 7, 2008 "The Today Show" did a real disservice to parents, kids and our industry. Half truths and insinuations. We got hit pretty hard last week. Visit http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/24001605/ for a print story from MSNBC & The Today Show. It seems that some reporters and news anchors are out to sell the sensational rather than the truth. And they rarely are made accountable or it is a tedious process to get them to admit that they "bent the statistics."

Hype

The gymnast they featured, whose "Olympic dreams were shattered", was a 15-year-old Level 7. Dramatic language, but she was a normal competitive gymnast like you find right here at Buckeye Gymnastics and in gyms across the state of Ohio. She was not nor had she ever been an “Olympic hopeful”. Her dreams are as important as any other child's, but the Olympics were just thrown in to make her story sound much more dramatic.

Misinformation

NBC's Chief Medical Editor, who was so negative about gymnastics, is a specialist in cancers of the throat and neck. From the very start of her medical practice, she has only ever worked in that field. Her complete ignorance of gymnastics is obvious from her recycling of the old discredited myths of eating disorders and bone problems. As everyone with knowledge in the field now knows, eating disorders are relatively rare in gymnastics and gymnastics actually promotes increased bone density!

Misleading Statistics: Today Show and Injuries to Children

The survey counted injuries from many sources. 40% of the reported gymnastics injuries were from schools, 15% were from home (yes, really) and about 5% from "other", leaving only 40% of this supposedly huge number of injuries actually occurring in a gymnastics club (or rec. center) setting.

So take all of the numbers and multiply by 0.4 to get a more accurate number of what is happening in our gyms. Not so scary now. Wait, it gets better. The show (and the study) said, "5 out of every 1000 gymnasts sustained an injury serious enough to require acute care." First, they used the total number of number of competitive gymnasts in the country, estimated at 600,000, to arrive at this statistic. So, given that there are at least ten times more recreational gymnasts training in these clubs than competitive gymnasts (probably more), that drops the rate of "serious injury” for all such participants in gymnastics down to 5 out of every 10,000. Remember to factor in that only 40% of these are from gymnastic centers (or rec. centers), and we are down to 2 out of every 10,000. Wow - not so scary after all.

Wait, that's still not the whole story. "An injury serious enough to require acute care," sounds bad, doesn't it? However, the study itself admits, in the small print, that the most common injury was a sprain or strain!

Conclusion

So, after adjusting for statistic abuse and hyperbole, what we end up with is that the average child participating in gymnastics in a gymnastics center (or a rec. center) has a 2 in 10,000 chance of injury over the entire time he or she is participating, and that injury is most likely to be a strain or sprain. While the goal is to reduce the injury rate to zero, that is simply not possible in a sport where the children are expected to fall down.

It would be interesting to compare gymnastics to some other sports and activities to see just how safe or unsafe gymnastics really is. Wait! There is a study that shows just that.

The U.S Consumer Product Safety Commission: National Injury Information Clearinghouse 2003

Gymnastics does not rank in the top 15 on this list.  Trampoline injuries come in at number 8 but these injuries came with the surge in backyard trampolines and overwhelming majority of these injuries occurred at home.  Please see our recent newsletter for an article on backyard trampoline safety. more...