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“We would just pee off the side of the porch.” Over the next 10 years, the Karolyis would amass 2,000 acres, which Bela filled with horses, deer, dachshunds, camels, peacocks - and a bull named Gorbachev. “Who wants to go to an outhouse in the middle of the night?” says 1988 Olympian Chelle Stack-Marcella. He later built the gymnasts their own cabin to share - with an outhouse. The athletes stayed with Bela, Martha and their daughter, Andrea, in a cabin Bela renovated. When Bela first took his gymnasts there for conditioning camps before the 1988 Olympics, he offset intense workout and running sessions by letting them ride horses, drive ATVs and try target shooting. In 1985, he and Martha purchased 50 acres for $69,000. On a hunting trip in the early 1980s near Huntsville, a couple of hours north of Houston, Bela discovered privately owned land available within the Sam Houston National Forest. Phoebe Mills, 1988 Olympic bronze medalist on balance beam “We got up in the morning, and it was like, ‘Go in that field and jog!’ I said, ‘Wait a second, there’s cows in that field and bulls.’ We started jogging, and is on his four-wheeler behind us, just showing us the path.” In conjunction with the 30 for 30 Podcast “Heavy Medals: Inside the Karolyi Gymnastics Empire,” we go inside the Ranch to examine how the Karolyis built an empire over three decades - and at what price. When hundreds of athletes detailed sexual abuse by USA Gymnastics national team physician Larry Nassar, some of which occurred at the Ranch, questions arose as to how this could have happened. By the time Martha retired in 2016, they’d become the dominant force in women’s gymnastics. Why would they? Before the Karolyis, the U.S. Listen to “Heavy Medals” on one of the following platforms:ĮSPN PodCenter | ESPN App Apple Podcasts | Spotifyįew questioned the wisdom of training children and teenagers in a risky sport at such an isolated venue, far from hospitals and cut off from their families. From a few rustic buildings within a national forest, it became the center of women’s elite gymnastics in the United States. As the Karolyis’ influence grew, so did the importance of the Karolyi Ranch. The couple amassed unprecedented power in the sport and brought historic success to the U.S. from Romania in 1981 after the Olympic success of their protégé Nadia Comaneci. women’s gymnastics national team training center was located at the ranch home of Bela and Martha Karolyi, coaches who had defected to the U.S. I started getting this pit in my stomach.” “That’s when I knew we were pulling up to the Ranch. “You drive through the woods for like 15 miles and then you see this green gate,” says 2012 Olympic gold medalist Jordyn Wieber.

women gymnasts would pack a bag, say goodbye to their parents and take a monthly trip that ended with a long drive down a dirt road to a remote compound in a Texas forest. Ford and Alyssa Roenigkįor almost 20 years, top U.S.