Gymnastics team, tired of ‘sexualization,’ wears unitards

TOKYO (AP) — The team’s outfits looked akin to the others successful the country arsenic the arena lights gleamed disconnected crystals crisscrossing their chests and down their crimson and achromatic sleeves.

But the German gymnastics team’s caller Olympic suits didn’t halt astatine their hips.

For decades, pistillate gymnasts person worn bikini-cut leotards. In qualifying connected Sunday, however, the German squad alternatively wore unitards that stretched to their ankles, intending to propulsion backmost against sexualization of women successful gymnastics.

The Tokyo Olympics are the archetypal Summer Games since Larry Nassar, a erstwhile USA Gymnastics nationalist squad doctor, was sent to situation for 176 years for sexually abusing hundreds of gymnasts, including immoderate of the sport’s top stars. At his sentencing, athletes — immoderate of them Olympians — described however the sport’s civilization allowed for maltreatment and objectification of young women and girls.

Male gymnasts deterioration comparatively body-covering clothes: singlets, with escaped shorts for their level workout and vault, and agelong pants connected barroom and pommel equine routines.

The German squad archetypal wore unitards astatine the European Artistic Gymnastics Championships successful April.

Sarah Voss, a 21-year-old German, said they weren’t definite they would determine to deterioration them again during Olympic contention until they got unneurotic earlier the meet.

“We sat unneurotic contiguous and said, OK, we privation to person a large competition,” Voss said. “We privation to consciousness amazing, we privation to amusement everyone that we look amazing.”

Their wardrobe revolution, portion wide championed, has not truthful acold started a trend. Leotards that permission the legs bare were worn by each different pistillate gymnast during qualifying astatine the Tokyo Games.

At 4-foot-8, American superstar Simone Biles said successful June that she prefers leotards due to the fact that they lengthen the limb and marque her look taller.

“But I basal with their determination to deterioration immoderate they delight and immoderate makes them consciousness comfortable,” Biles said. “So if anyone retired determination wants to deterioration a unitard oregon leotard, it’s wholly up to you.”

Matt Cowan, the main commercialized serviceman for GK Elite, the U.S.’ premier leotard manufacturer, said astir requests for unitards present travel from countries the necessitate modesty for taste and spiritual reasons. They person different seen nary unreserved toward catsuits.

“Would we bash it? Absolutely. We person the capabilities of designing it and doing it, and we person done it,” Cowan said. “But from a user request perspective, we are not determination yet.”

Gymnastics is often viewed arsenic a athletics champion performed by precise young women and girls. Biles, astatine 24, often jokes astir being old; she precocious called herself a grandma connected societal media.

But different nations person defied that accent connected youth, including the Germans: Elisabeth Seitz is 27, Kim Bui is 32, Pauline Schafer is 24, and Voss is 21. Their mean property of 26. Voss said that gymnastics customs should permission country for pistillate bodies arsenic they property and change.

Their outfits comply with the wardrobe rules of the International Gymnastics Federation. But that doesn’t mean pistillate athletes are mostly escaped to screen their bodies arsenic they choose.

Just days earlier the Games began, the Norwegian women’s formation handball squad refused to play successful bikini bottoms during European tournaments, opting alternatively for skin-tight shorts. For that, they received a good for violating a wardrobe requirement.

But astatine gymnastics qualifying Sunday, the announcer implicit the loudspeaker called the outfits “very bully indeed.” The German squad did not suffice for finals, but the announcer pondered if their squad debut connected the Olympic signifier mightiness summation unitards’ popularity.

AP Sports Writer Will Graves contributed to this report.