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Three former gymnasts from the Xeslka club - one of the most prestigious in Spain - who were part of the training group at the elite center in Mallorca, a former employee of the club and a mother of a gymnast who had to leave the sport due to an injury that caused lameness have joined the accusations of 20 sports professionals, published by EL PAÍS, against Pedro Mir Homar, technical director of the club and also coach of the elite preparation center of Palma, the Center de Tecnificació Esportiva de les Illes Balears ( CTEIB).
They corroborate the facts told by the other gymnasts to this newspaper and report having suffered and seen situations of abuse of power and physical and psychological abuse in their years as athletes in the CTEIB, how it was common to train with injuries, the pressure to lose weight and humiliations. for those who didn't get it.
They claim to have suffered or seen physical attacks, they talk about a “sect” from which it is difficult to leave, and they explain how the coach was imposing “a system of fear” through which the gymnasts felt that they were doing something wrong and deserved the punishment. slaps and slaps.
This is what Michelle Cortazar tells it, who is now 27 years old and entered Xeslka in 2005 at the age of 9.
She came out in 2011. “She hit me three times.
The third time I ended up bleeding from my nose and while she slapped my face clean with water she told me: 'They are going to take me to prison because of you, you pushed me to the limit, you made me do something I didn't want to do.'
I felt guilty, a bad person and ashamed that everyone could see how he hit me, that I was the one causing that attitude in him.”
Three former gymnasts who were present saw the slap and corroborate Michelle's version.
Since then, she says, she has also had problems with food.
“I feel bad about weighing myself.
If I go to McDonald's, the next day I spend an hour climbing stairs to get the hamburger down;
If it doesn't bother me.
This is what she heard every day at the CTEIB.”
And she adds: “I remember the queues to go spit or vomit before weighing and thus lose a few grams, the terror with which I got on the scale.
'Very good,' they said when someone who was thin was weighed.
To me, who was a little bigger, they told me: 'Stop eating cookies.
You get injured because you are fat, if you are thin you fly, if you are fat you fall.'
And I kept telling myself: 'I have to be thin or else I'll get injured.'
More information
Sixteen professionals from the world of artistic gymnastics accuse coach Pedro Mir of abuse of power and mistreatment
Pedro Mir continues to deny all the accusations.
Asked this Wednesday about the new accusations, he responded in an aggressive tone: “Blows?
They already put that in the first report and I don't know what it's about.
I can't understand that there are people who say that there are blows.
In no way were there any.
Attacks?
Tell me who they are!
I have never pushed anyone to the ground nor had there been a bloody nose, that has not happened, how could that happen in a center like this that is all facing the public.
"I don't know what they are inventing and I don't know where they want to go."
Michelle, who today lives in Barcelona, contacted this newspaper after reading the testimonies of more gymnasts published on February 17 and 22 and has contacted a lawyer for advice on filing a complaint.
"I tell what I suffered so that Pedro never trains any more minors, so that no one goes through what I went through."
She reports to this newspaper three physical attacks by Mir, the first at the age of 13 and all for having blockages when performing exercises, something very common in artistic gymnastics.
“The first was on the bar [balance beam 1.20 meters from the ground].
He grabbed my arm and forcefully threw me to the ground.
Right after he told me that he would talk to my father and that I would not do that to him again.
He told him that he tried to get me off the bar, but that he didn't control his strength.
When I heard that I thought: 'It was my doing, he didn't do it on purpose.'
The second was a few months later, in the foal, I had another blockage.
I couldn't jump.
He grabbed me by the arm, slammed me against the wall and slapped me twice.
Pedro spoke to my parents again and told them that he wanted to catch me and that he didn't do it right, he slipped his hand and accidentally hit me in the face.
And the third: “It was on the parallel bars [the highest band of this device is 2.5 meters from the ground], I had fallen on it a few days before and it was blocked.
She cried and told Pedro that she couldn't.
She grabbed my arm, threw me to the ground and started hitting me.
I could only curl up in a ball and wait for him to finish.
He had a split lip and a bruise on his nose.
Pedro met with my parents, and he convinced them that everything was fine.
He told them: 'Michelle is very good, she can go very far, but she doesn't make an effort, she has talked back to me, she is rebellious and her attitude has been so bad that I accidentally slapped her.'
When we left the meeting, Pedro smiled at me and said: 'Why isn't she going to come back?
'I understood that I didn't have to tell the truth to my parents.'
Nor to anyone: “When you're in there you don't interact with anyone other than your teammates.
We studied, we trained, we studied, we didn't go to birthdays because we weren't allowed to miss training.
I remember arriving at school, seeing the children with their normal lives.
And I thought: 'How is this happening to me?'
"I didn't conceive it."
That is exactly what S. cannot forgive,
the mother of a former gymnast at the center who has asked not to be identified when telling her story.
“I still wonder how my husband and I could have ignored so many things, how we were not able to get her out of there.
The fault is ours".
Her daughter, who is now almost 18 years old, spent 11 years at Xelska and left in 2020 and, according to her mother, has chronic pain and a limp in one knee.
This is her story: “My daughter has a chronic injury.
She fell off an apparatus in 2018 [she was 12 years old] and her femur got stuck in her kneecap, it splintered.
We found out that later.
The day she fell, they took her to a clinic arranged with the Federation and she came out with a diagnosis of possible knee dislocation and a cast from the groin to the ankle.
I don't remember who saw the x-ray, we don't.
The next day she went to the gymnastics room and by Mir's order she removed the cast because he considered that it was possibly just a dislocation.
She continued training and competing, even though she told them that she couldn't do it because of the pain.
Pedro attributed it to the fact that fluid was accumulating due to the bruise itself.
In 2019, S. says, the coach took them to see a doctor he trusted outside the CTEIB.
He saw the x-ray and told us that she had suffered a contusion that splintered her femur and caused a knee injury.
He told us that he shouldn't have been training.
But what if he's been doing it for a year!
From there he went to the operating room.
But he never recovered because it was too late.”
What did Pedro Mir say when the doctor commented that he should not have been training?
"That she was training just enough, that she was lost, that she didn't follow the group and complained about everything... I was paralyzed, what a fool I have been."
Her daughter also says that she felt abandoned by Xelska in the rehabilitation: “The less promising ones were not taken into account, they looked after us from time to time and looked down on us.
They were almost unconcerned about my recovery.
There was only one coach who took me into account.”
Asked about this, Mir assures: “I have never removed a cast from anyone, nor have I had a cast removed from anyone.
The usual procedure is to ask the doctor and inform the parents.”
He claims she was never informed.
His accusation is a fourth more than what this newspaper has reported and for which four doctors and five physiotherapists from the center collectively accused Pedro Mir and informed management in 2022 that the technician was threatening the minor's health.
Precisely for urging injured gymnasts to compete and train or shorten sick leave times at least since 2013.
Pedro Mir Homar, on February 7, at the presentation of the Iberdrola Artistic Gymnastics League.
Palma City Council
A former Xeslka gymnast, who asks not to be identified out of fear, tells how the fear was generated.
“They are small gestures at first, fear imposes itself on you and you internalize it.
You are under abusive pressure.
If you don't do this, you won't compete.
He grabbed me once by the mesh and pushed me against the bar.
My parents went to talk to him and came out saying it was my fault.
The manipulation was such that we, the children, were always the ones who exaggerated and distorted events.
One day he screamed in my face and although I was terrified at that moment he forced me to do a stunt, three meters above the ground: 'You're not leaving here until you do it, I don't care if you fall on your head.' .
He also maintains that he has regularly seen "scorn, inappropriate grabbing of the arms, and yelling at the gymnasts in a fierce manner and five centimeters from his face."
The third former gymnast, who entered the center when she was 8 years old, confirms that Mir was the only coach among the clubs who ate with the athletes [to control their food].
“I ate a lot because it burned it off.
He weighed 48 kilos at that time and he told me: 'when you leave gymnastics you will weigh 200 kilos.'
I quit when I was 15 and a year after quitting I ended up developing an eating disorder.
I saw the beatings and the abuse.
"We were girls and we were so hypnotized that we didn't even realize."
A fifth person, a former club employee who also asks not to be identified or with the dates of her time at the CTEIB for fear of reprisals, says she has seen these abuses daily.
“It was normal.
It's a sect, it's Pedro and his followers: nobody says anything because whoever says something, he's screwed.
If a
physio
told him that a gymnast needed three weeks of recovery, Pedro would reply: 'Just manage one because I have a competition.'
It doesn't matter what position you have, you do what he says.
And if you say something, they take you out of the way.
The fear is so much that no one dares to speak.
They believe it so much that they tell you: 'It's normal that he gave him a shit because he got on his nerves.'
In addition to the accusations of four doctors and five physios, three workers in the socio-educational field who in 2020-21 promoted an abuse detection program in the CTEIB (which depends on the Balearic Government) and interviewed 370 people including athletes, family members, workers and coaching staff wrote three reports in which they reported situations of abuse of power and psychological verbal abuse.
They also verbally communicated their concern about the “structural and systemic violence” at the center.
The Prosecutor for Minors of Mallorca opened an investigation in May 2022 and closed it in October as it did not consider that the events were classified as crimes.
Pedro Mir Homar continues training at the CTEIB.
The Spanish Gymnastics Federation (RFEG), with which the coach traveled last week to participate in a World Cup event in Germany, asked if it planned to take any type of measure, replied: “At the RFEG we were not aware of of this matter until the publication of EL PAÍS and we are currently gathering information.”
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