One of the biggest changes in gymnastics over the past few decades has been the diminishing prowess of the gymnastics coach as the gymnasts themselves have gained more agency over their careers, their reputations, and their earnings. For years, we saw coaches (mostly male, but not always) who assumed credit for the achievements of the athletes they worked with. Often, they made money off the names of those athletes while the athletes faded into the collective memory of the gymternet. And too often, we lost the coach’s story too, because the coach put all of their story into the athlete.
Aimee Boorman, who coached Simone Biles from the time Biles was 6 until the Rio Olympics in 2016, is exceedingly careful in her new book, “The Balance: My Years Coaching Simone Biles,” to note that Biles is a natural talent and a big personality on her own, but that with Boorman’s assistance and training methods, was able to harness her power and become the GOAT as we know her. It is a fine line, and she knows it.
To Boorman’s credit, writing a book about being a good and positive coach is a fraught thing in the post-Larry Nassar, post-#metoo, post-#gymnasticsalliance world, and she does manage to stay on the right side of that fine line throughout. She seems to understand…
