U.S.A. Gymnastics’s board of directors issued a statement as well, acknowledging that it had received a letter from the U.S.O.C. initiating the decertification process and that it was “evaluating the best path forward for our athletes, professional members, the organization and staff.”

“U.S.A. Gymnastics’s board was seated in June 2018 and inherited an organization in crisis with significant challenges that were years in the making,” the statement said. “In the four months since, the Board has done everything it could to move this organization towards a better future.” The board also added that it was searching for a new U.S.A.G. chief executive and that “substantial work remains” for the organization.

If U.S.A. Gymnastics is decertified, it would be only the fourth time in recent years that the U.S.O.C. has officially wrested control from a national governing body. In the past, it has decertified team handball because of “a continued pattern of dysfunction,” and also took over the taekwondo federation because it had financial problems and failed to “effectively confront its problems.”

The U.S.O.C. even threatened to disband U.S.A. Track and Field simply because that organization’s board of directors was too big.

In this instance, the Olympic committee has asked U.S.A. Gymnastics to voluntarily hand over control of the federation in the wake of its handling of one of the biggest sex-abuse scandals in sports history. The organization failed to protect scores of athletes from Lawrence G. Nassar, the former longtime national team doctor who is now in prison serving what amounts to a life sentence for multiple charges of criminal sexual conduct. He was initially arrested in 2016, and more than 300 girls and women have accused him of molesting them under the guise of medical treatment.