That gymcastic episode with Orozco was a lot. Would you care to start unpacking?
Sure. I am relistening to the episode as I type this. It’s VERY long, so I’m putting it under the cut. Note: this isn’t 100% in order since I tried to group some similar things together.
On the BLM protests: Talks about being raised in a Puerto Rican household where his lighter skinned (he calls them “white passing”) [adoptive] parents basically ignored the fact he was black and he didn’t grow up knowing about his own culture. “You’re not Black, you’re Puerto Rican.” Talks about his parents’ internalized racism and their code-switching. His parents would use the n-word a lot. I can’t imagine how confusing that must be.
He was the only black kid on the national team for a long time as a junior (he says ages 8 to 15-16). He was the only one in his gym as well. So there was basically no representation of black men in gymnastics (this is a recurring theme in this interview).
Doesn’t call his father his father anymore. Uses his first name Willie. Says Willie never really talked to him, but would only reach out if he needed money or something. Says Willie is a narcissist. John bought his dad a house in Colorado after his mom died. They moved in, but then his dad became extremely delinquent (or didn’t pay at all) with the rent/mortgage. John bought the house because his dad had bad credit, but John didn’t. John paid for several months before his dad claimed he could now afford it. Sounds like his dad was also addicted to prescription medication and was spending irresponsibly due to that, which then led to him not being able to afford the house payments. Willie not paying screwed up John’s credit. Shortly after the Olympics, John moved to LA and had surgery that required his arm to be in a sling for a bit. Shortly after he got out of the sling, John went to Colorado to pick up some of his things from the house. John was also about to evict Willie. He says Willie knew he was coming to pick up his things. When John arrived, Willie blocked him from entering and physically pushed him back (again, John is still recovering from surgery!). Willie then put his hand on John’s throat, pushed him out of the doorway, and locked the doors. Willie then changed the locks and called the cops. John said he also called the cops? John says this was Willie’s last, desperate attempt at control. John does not talk about his siblings at all.
Obviously, this was not how John’s family was portrayed for the NBC fluff stories. John said he felt pressure from other families and other Black people (unclear how). Said he would tell the truth when he’s ready (which I guess is now?). Training was difficult and he didn’t like camps, but he also looked at them as a way to get out of the house. No one in gymnastics understood him because they didn’t care to understand. And not having anyone else like him in gymnastics to understand made it worse.
Kensley brings up John’s twitter exchange with Donnell Whittenburg a few years ago after Don wasn’t named to the Worlds team. John said USAG “have been doing us dirty for years” and “I’ve never seen them leave a World medalist off the team except for me. I wonder what we have in common.” Says he “100%” is alluding to race. He doesn’t want this to bite Don in the butt, but he wants people to realize that they are treating Don differently.
This leads into how USAG has treated Black men. When the Black guys messed up in some way (i.e. late to practice), they always had to do these humiliating punishments. Like taking everyone’s dishes in the cafeteria to get cleaned, or taking everyone’s towels from the sauna back to the hotel. Says Kevin Mazeika (then the High Performance Director or whatever the men call it) made him do the towel thing at a camp in China because he was late to practice. The next day, Jake Dalton and Alex Naddour were late to practice but got no punishment. No punishment for the same thing. Once, John and Don were late to practice, and Mazeika made him sing a song to everyone, and Don had to make some speech. John confirms that there are no rules in the athlete’s handbook that specify any punishments if someone is late or whatever. He says punishments were purely selective and made to humiliate. Says Akash was also made to do punishments, but Sam fucked up all the time (along with Jake, Alex, Chris Brooks) and they didn’t get in trouble. Says Mazeika and others liked them (the white guys) because they made Mazeika feel like he was in college again.
Jessica says that for anyone who doesn’t know, “Kevin was the Marta of the men’s program.” And John adds, “Without the talent.” LMAO. John says Marta “was the devil, but she made it happen.”
Jessica says that the gay and Black athletes have always had a different experience to the white athletes on the team, and this has been the case for a long time. The men’s team under Mazeika was a very fratty, bro atmosphere. John agrees. Says a lot of time was wasted on team bonding activities and he essentially found it very fake. Basically: “Do you think the Chinese are doing this? You think Russia is doing this? Do you think they like each other or do you think they are functional with each other?” Says Mazeika was just trying to get the most out of the gymnasts he liked. After the 1992 Olympics, the bro culture was so bad in USA MAG that there was an investigation (I personally do not know much about this tbh). Clearly things don’t seem to have changed. John says the whole MAG committee is about preserving this culture.
The above culture is not about getting results. Says he was fucked over a lot as a junior and felt he was held back. John said he would win camp competitions, but then would get passed over for the older juniors who were about to turn senior (”this is their last competition, they really deserve this”).
The Marvin Kimble stuff. Says Marvo could be national champion but Mazeika didn’t want to put in the work with him because Mazeika didn’t like his attitude or whatever. Which is dumb because other gymnasts Mazeika worked with had huge attitudes, like Blaine Wilson. Says Marvo was never disrespectful or offensive, never said anything out of line. Thinks Marvin feels there is no point, feels hopeless because of the way he is being treated. Says Marvo was kicked out of OTC because they found beer in his fridge. In the fridge he shared with Sam. Sam denied they were his, but Marvin stupidly admitted to it. Jessica says adults/coaches who are ex-national team members buy alcohol for NT members at camps but have no repercussions (John says, “You talking about Horton?” LOL but I don’t think she is since she specified “from Colorado.” I’m not sure how much Jessica knows). And UGH KENSLEY. “I just want to be fair to all sides.” Nah, you can fuck off with that BS. Says Marvo was given “multiple warnings” and says this has been confirmed from five sources. At least she agrees that Marvin may be the most talented gymnast in the US right now, which I find to be a very surprising comment from her given how hard she goes for Sam. Jessica is a voice of reason here and says “I don’t care how many warnings Marvin got, because the white athletes aren’t getting ANY warnings for doing the same thing.” EXACTLY. [re: all 3 hosts’ behavior, especially Kensley’s, in this episode is apparently addressed in the most recent episode with Jennifer Sey. I have not listened to it yet, but I heard it is... not great]
In 2011 Worlds after John qualified to AA finals in 2nd behind Kohei, Mazeika told John that the judges are saying “you don’t have a certain look.” Basically was fat-shaming John. Mazeika didn’t even acknowledge John’s accomplishments.
2012 Nationals and the score changes: John I don’t think knew specifics, but he knew something “sketchy” was happening. John said at 2016 Trials, they said “We’re really gonna go off scores this year, we’re really going to watch every single athlete and performance to make the right choices.” Spencer: “WHAT WERE YOU DOING BEFORE THAT???” Kensley brings up Robert Andrews, the team’s former psychologist, who said that pre-2012 the committee was changing scores to put the people they wanted on the team. John said that for both MAG and WAG, they had narratives they wanted to push and that’s what drove team selection. Mostly for the MAG side, but still. This is where he brings up Gabby in 2016, but I’m not going to talk about that here.
John vaulting in 2012 TF. He says he hadn’t landed a single vault in London until qualifications. He almost didn’t even do AA because of it. But then when the TF lineup came out, he saw he was on the lineups. Says Vitaliy Marinich said “Well you landed it in prelims and they think you can do it.” John insisted he wasn’t comfortable and said everyone else had better vaults. In the back gym at TF, he was landing his vaults on his back. (They also wanted him to warm up floor even though he wasn’t competing it) After the vault warmup, Mazeika said he wasn’t going to do vault and John was relieved. However, the FIG said the only way he could be removed from the lineup is due to injury since it was less than 24h before the competition, so John was basically forced to vault. John was definitely injured though since he had gotten a cortisone shot that week. But John said that Mazeika put him up on vault because Horton said he didn’t want to vault or some shit like that. It doesn’t really make much sense to me, but Jessica edited Horton’s side in and apparently Horton said he couldn’t live with himself if Mazeika had to lie about John being injured because they had talked about being a team of “integrity.” I’m calling BULLSHIT on that because like I said, John was obviously injured and it wouldn’t have been a lie (but I think that means he would have had to be pulled from TF entirely? not sure). John should never have been put on the lineup in the first place if his vaulting was as bad the entire time they were in London as he says. And I guess once they figured out putting John up on vault was a bad idea, it was too late and/or Horton didn’t want to vault. While Horton wasn’t vaulting his Dragulescu well, he could still do the Roche, which is more than can be said for John.
RE: Horton. John says Horton would use racial slurs. He wasn’t sure if Horton was joking or not, but it still bothered John. “He is one of the worst people to me.” John also said there was a period of 3 years where Horton didn’t really compete or earn a spot on the team, but kept being added to the team and thus receiving a stipend anyway (John has mentioned this before on social media but didn’t name Horton outright - I had figured it out though. I might have screenshots somewhere). John brings this up, and the fact that Sam had broken both of his ankles his last junior year but was still named to the senior national team, but says when he too was injured his last junior year, he was not named to the senior team.
There was an issue with athletes smoking weed at the OTC and at least one person got suspended for it. This is where some names (and other curses I think) are bleeped out.
“I love gymnastics. But I don’t like the culture of it.”
John getting injured on tour: Horton convinced John to do the full-twisting double back dismount off pbars, which is insane because no one should go super hard on tour like that. So he injured himself on that skill halfway through the show but still managed to walk off the stage/podium (idk I’m just guessing it’s a stage here, I’m not sure what the setup was). And when he went to go get medical treatment, they didn’t believe he was injured. He even had to yell and ask them for a wheelchair. This was after Aly and McKayla had a “slip-up” where they were basically carried off here (I don’t remember this so I’m just going off John’s description here).
In 2016, the men’s team was doing a People magazine shoot. Mazeika said they had to be cleanshaven, which the guys found weird. So when they met with the magazine staff, John asked them and they said his mustache was fine. But Mazeika insisted this was how they wanted Team USA to look, that this is how they showed they were a team. “I’m pretty sure we look like a team when we put the same uniform on.” Mazeika then gave the ultimatum, that if John didn’t show up to practice shaved, he would not be allowed to participate in the shoot. John said this was a power move by Mazeika - not only to John, but also because the only other athletes with faces to shave were Don and Marvin. In the end, everyone shaved their faces because they didn’t want to lose this opportunity.
John briefly recounts another Marta anecdote - John was talking to Ebee at American Cup, and Ebee mentioned that none of the guys were ever really allowed to come sit with us at banquets or anything. “Marta must really like you.” Apparently Marta thought he was great (maybe because he didn’t celebrate super loudly or celebrate mediocrity or something? idk haha) but thought he “fell a little too much” haha
Sounds like John didn’t really have any other friendships with other Black non-American gymnasts because they didn’t speak English mostly, and I guess there weren’t as many as there are now. He mentions being friendly with Louis Smith; he also brings up Axel Augis and Ray Zapata but it’s unclear if they were friendly as well.
Brings up inflated domestic scoring when it comes to Sam, but Don has the opposite situation where he scores better internationally. He says Don gets underscored at home because “they want to teach him lessons or some shit” about having a good attitude... but he says Paul Ruggeri would end routines with simple skills because he just didn’t care.
Spencer brings up a time where apparently Marvin got in trouble somehow for celebrating after a pommels routine. Meanwhile, John mentions a lot of guys, particularly the OU guys, have a thing for celebrating really loudly in competition even when their routine wasn’t as good as practice.
He thought he was going to be blacklisted somehow for switching to represent PR. He switched because of racism within USAG. He tentatively is still training to try and qualify for Tokyo. John still needs sponsors, though.
John said he heard Brett is “terrible.” That he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Brett seems like a nice guy, but apparently he isn’t trying to change much and is more about trying to please everyone. John said no one in leadership has any goals regarding success. I’m not sure if this pertains to Brett specifically, but John says they were more concerned about keeping their jobs... until their jobs depended on how well the guys did ($$$). Mostly people just made changes that didn’t actually benefit the athletes, or they did stupid things to appease their superiors.
Kensley then defends Brett here and says he has instituted this way to track success that the NFL uses (I have no idea how that’s useful and John agrees). She asks John if he would be willing to talk with anyone at USAG to create a better environment for Black athletes. John says that while he is no longer involved with USAG (due to the nationality change), there are other Black athletes in the program who deserve a better environment, so USAG should talk to them. He also says that USAG should have better representation in leadership as well; it’s hard for a non-white athlete to speak up when they don’t have anyone in leadership who shares their experiences. Most recent MTC minutes show everyone who was on the call is white (Raj Bhavsar was laid off? Furloughed? during the pandemic). John says Kevin Tan (2008 Olympian) came in as athlete rep, wanted to make a lot of changes, and was fired pretty quickly without explanation. Editing Jessica comes in with a comment from Tan that he chose to step down. John also mentions Dave Durante, who John says tried to effect some changes as athlete rep but suggests that he too stepped down after seeing nothing would probably change. John thought Ron Galimore would help make changes (since Galimore is also Black I guess?), but he ended up just being Steve Penny’s “puppet.” Similar story with Steve Butcher. John says there are too many people concerned with holding onto power.
Jessica says that according to Kensley, the men still don’t have an athlete rep. This is not entirely true; current athlete rep is Joey Hagerty, but according to the MTC minutes from earlier in June that I am reading right now (as a break from listening to this), Hagerty is stepping down. Quite interesting that a number of athlete reps have stepped down after only a few months. John brings up the fact that USOPTC didn’t have a coach for months after Marinich was fired. According to John, Andriy Stepanchenko (I think I spelled that right), who was assistant head coach, was promoted to Marinich’s position because USAG didn’t want to bring in an outside person and pay them what they were worth. John says Stepanchenko gives great technical advice but doesn’t know how to build a program. John thinks a lot of their advice is outdated; he also mentions people saying “you have to be like the girls” but uh NO, not a good comparison.
John says Sam is genuinely a good person with good intentions and always tried to include John in things. However, John of course brings up how many times Sam has “dropped the ball” in competitions. Calls Sam “a beautiful disaster.”
Again, he emphasizes that he, Don, and Marvin work so hard only to have opportunities taken away. It feels hopeless.
Both he and Jessica say it doesn’t entirely make sense why USA MAG prioritizes the team instead of individual medalists. But team medals = more money for them. John gets mad because we are so far behind Russia, China, and Japan. He notes how far GB MAG has come the past few cycles and asks “What are Great Britain doing that we are not doing?” Yes USA has beat them the past couple Worlds, but they weren’t always a team powerhouse. Kensley said that when London won the 2012 Olympic bid, they poured a lot of money into the program.
Re: Paul Ruggeri - He thinks Paul is fake. John says somebody was using his photo (with his face cropped out) on Grindr in Colorado. They were in Stuttgart (John did the AA cup, Paul was part of the team comp), and the team did really poorly. They went to dinner that night before the AA comp the next day. At dinner, Paul sat next to John (which John says Paul never did, though John never had issues with Paul up to this point), and Paul showed him the Grindr photo (since the person was apparently in the Stuttgart area) and asked “Is this you? Do you know him” This was in front of the other teammates, though John says Paul had showed the other teammates before this confrontation. John said he didn’t know what to do, and thought Paul was trying to throw him off for the competition the following day (to make himself feel better about the team doing poorly? idk). While John doesn’t explicitly admit to being gay or on Grindr in the podcast (though he also alludes to it earlier while talking about Brett, except it’s mumbled and I couldn’t make it out with enough confidence to type here), he says that as someone who is gay himself, Paul should have known better than to practically out him in front of a bunch of people (”You know this is how people kill themselves, right?”). Jessica got a comment from Paul where Paul said he did not intend to out John, that Paul had only showed the photo to 2 of his teammates and asked “Don’t you think it’s Orozco?”
John said the women’s team was bonded by a lot of traumatic things, but that wasn’t really the case on the men’s side. Implies there was some back-stabbing and tattle-tales amongst the men.
He says there was “a lot of weird ‘Me Too’ stuff happening on tour” in 2012 (probably 2016 as well but I think he only explicitly said 2012). Hints that some married people on tour cheated on their spouses - just a lot of infidelity in general I guess even if people weren’t married. John doesn’t want to name anyone specifically. Tours are basically giant Safe Sport violations.
2016 tour: John says they didn’t want to pay him. He said that Penny and Galimore came to him and said basically that he should be thankful or some shit. He was already walking at that point and said he could have a non-performing role because they were concerned about his knee. Sounds like they only paid him for half the tour but still called him a hero and crap. He makes it sound like at that point they were already trying to save money for lawsuits.
John says they still use his photo to promote Winter Cup and nationals, but they won’t even invite him to the competitions.
The transition from being a full-time athlete to a “normal” person is extremely difficult. John said one of his goals is to have a transitional facility for athletes to switch to real-world jobs and such. Seems like a good idea in theory, but I’m not sure how it would work in practice. He mentions a lot of Zoom classes/sessions, but I think the topic at this point shifts to just supporting Black athletes in general, not this transitional facility.
John wants there to be some sort of national directory for Black businesses, to make it easier to help figure out who to support.
PHEW. That was A LOT. I guess if you have any specific questions about any of this, I can try to answer them.
