Jordyn Wieber Displays on How She Turned ‘Resilient’ After Larry Nassar Scandal

Olympic gold medalist Jordyn Wieber is opening in regards to the affect that her gymnastics profession and the Larry Nassar intercourse abuse scandal has had on her all through her life.

Wieber, 29, is a contestant on the third season of Fox’s actuality competitors present Particular Forces: World’s Hardest Check alongside different celebrities together with athletes Nathan Adrian, Cam Newton, Landon Donovan, Marion Jones and Golden Tate.

Throughout the two-hour season premiere, which aired on Wednesday, Jan. 8, Wieber skilled a anxiousness assault and struggled to catch her breath throughout one intense train earlier than gathering her composure and persevering with within the competitors. Afterwards, the previous U.S. gymnast — who was a part of the famed gold-medal profitable “Fierce 5” squad on the 2012 Summer time Olympics — mirrored on why she needed to develop into a contestant on the acute actuality competitors.

“Within the sport of gymnastics, it was actually intense,” Wieber stated. “The principle motivating power was worry. We weren’t allowed to point out emotion. And I feel a variety of us put up gymnastics have realized that it has long-lasting impacts on us as individuals.”

After the incident, the previous athlete defined that she needed to look on the Fox program “to problem myself in a brand new manner that I have never actually been capable of problem myself since my gymnastics ended.”

“There was stuff that was happening behind the scenes that simply made it arduous to proceed and compete… I used to be a sufferer of some of the prolific sexual abuse circumstances within the historical past of sport, a health care provider was abusive and he went to jail,” Wieber defined, breaking down in tears throughout the episode. 

When requested if she had “unfinished enterprise” inside herself, Wieber nodded her head sure and whispered, “yeah.”

“I look again on myself as a baby throughout that point and go, ‘Wow, she actually… she was resilient,’ “ Wieber recalled. “Clearly there have been highs, there have been additionally some very low lows. My dad and mom at all times advised me that I grew to become an grownup at a younger age and I nonetheless really feel that manner.”

Wieber was one in all a number of gymnasts who testified at Nassar’s trial in 2018, telling the courtroom that the disgraced former gymnastics physician’s abuse started when she was 14 years previous, based on The Detroit Free Press.

Nassar was later convicted in 2018 for intercourse abuse after he was accused by greater than 150 ladies and women and was sentenced to 175 years in jail, PEOPLE reported on the time.

The adorned Olympian retired from gymnastics in 2015 and took on the job of head gymnastics coach at her alma mater, UCLA, earlier than later turning into the coach at Arkansas.

Wieber married Chris Brooks, a fellow Olympic gymnast and Arkansas gymnastics coach, final yr after the couple started courting in 2016.

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Particular Forces: World’s Hardest Check airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on Fox.