Paul Daugherty

@EnquirerDoc

Judging from her quick dismissal, prominent local coach Mary Lee Tracy never should have been named USA Gymnastics’ elite development coordinator in the first place. Three days after the troubled organization hired her last week, it fired her, bowing to the overwhelmingly negative reaction.

Why the outcry? Because in a December 2016 interview, Tracy decided Larry Nassar was “amazing.’’ Mister Amazing is currently in prison forever, after some 350 women and girls, many of them gymnasts, said he abused them while working as the national team’s doctor.

Tracy offered her take on Nassar after 50 girls already had gone public with their stories about the creep, and three days after Nassar had been indicted on federal child pornography charges. "They wanted to know my experience with Larry Nassar,’’ Tracy explained. “That’s what I shared.’’

Oh, my.

An elegant and beautiful sport has been run by a bunch of see-no-evil tone-deafs. Tracy included. That’s not to say Tracy has not been a very good coach. She mentored two Olympians, Amanda Borden and Jaycie Phelps, and was a coach for the women’s team that won gold in Atlanta in ’96. Tracy had avoided the criticism laid on other prominent national coaches, for their training methods.

Until now.

Women’s gymnastics has been rife with abuse forever. Twenty-three years ago, Joan Ryan wrote Little Girls In Pretty Boxes, a chronicle of what female gymnasts and figure skaters endured while aspiring to be elite. Would you want your daughter to suffer an eating disorder to become a champion?

How about stunted growth, delayed puberty and any number of psychological issues related to being a full-time athlete before you get to junior high?

We’ve noted forever the Faustian bargain involved: Trade a childhood to chase a medal. We didn’t know the half of it.

Aly Raisman was right to be outraged last week, when USA Gymnastics named Tracy as its elite development coordinator. Did these people not know of Tracy’s “amazing’’ comment? Or worse, did they not care? In today’s environment, the fact that Tracy could even be considered for such an important position indicates a head-shaking lack of sensitivity and awareness.

By all appearances, USAG has been an organization as interested in hiding its horrors as in slaying them. It includes some coaches who are more concerned with developing champions than developing well-rounded human beings. It’s an organization that included Larry Nassar among its prominent members.

Is there any sport, anywhere, more in need of a total revamp?

I wanted to talk with Tracy about it. She declined.

Twice in the past two years, I’d messaged her to ask about the evil Nassar. She declined. Given an opportunity to condemn Nassar, Tracy said no thanks, not interested. Offered a platform from which to decry Nassar’s pedophilia and to call for drastic changes in the way USA Gymnastics does business, Tracy stayed mum.

Via Facebook, Mary Lee Tracy now says she has seen the light. “I am all about solutions and learning from the survivors, we can do this together!’’ she posted Thursday on her page.

That’s great. And at least a decade too late. Larry Nassar’s evil required a conspiracy of silence too big to comprehend. Elite-level gymnastics is a fairly tight circle of folks. It might be true when Tracy – or anyone else – claims they didn’t know what Nassar was doing to girls for years. But that’s not good enough. Ignorance isn’t a defense.

Tracy suggested in a Facebook post last Wednesday that “It is time to learn from the past.’’ She betrayed that statement the next day, posting this:

“I absolutely did that interview and spoke from my truth and experience only. I did this without ever negating anyone else's awful experience.’’

Sorry. But one girl’s awful experience is the whole sport’s awful experience. There was nothing amazing about Larry Nassar, ever, other than his evil flourished as long as it did. What Tracy might have said two Decembers ago was, “I understand Larry Nassar is in legal trouble now. The allegations against him are awful. If he’s found guilty, he should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.’’

Instead, she said Nassar was amazing.

“My hope is to help create the safest learning environment for athletes and coaches of the future. Times have changed over the past 20 years and so have I,’’ Tracy posted last Wednesday.

Really? Tracy has worked and defended the methods used at the Karolyi Ranch, a gymnastics camp run by Bela and Marta Karolyi described as “an emotionally abusive environment’’ by three of Nassar’s victims, in an interview last year on 60 Minutes.

Now, she is “seeking counsel’’ apparently to reclaim the job she held for three days. It is time to learn from the past, Tracy posted.

No question. If only she’d said that 10 years ago. Or anytime in the past two years.