Anna Li, a former U.S. national team member and eight-time UCLA All-American, has been selected by gymnastics’ national governing body, to judge the vault at the U.S. Olympic Trials in June.
It’s the same event that Li, while coaching at her family’s gymnastics club in suburban Chicago, screamed at and body-shamed a young gymnast who was still mourning the recent death of her grandmother.
“Get your fat ass over the vault!” Li screamed at the girl, according to interviews and USA Gymnastics and U.S. Center for SafeSport documents. “You’re too fat to get over the vault!”
Li, an alternate on both the 2012 Olympic Games and 2011 World Championships gold medal-winning squads, was awarded seven high-profile 2024 judging assignments including the Olympic Trials, the U.S. Championships, and a World Cup by USA Gymnastics judging selection committee in December despite being under investigation by the U.S. Center for SafeSport since August 2019 for physically, verbally, and emotionally abusing, bullying, body shaming and pressuring young athletes to compete and/or train while injured.
The selection of Li by a committee that included former U.S. Olympic team coach Kelli Hill and Chellsie Memmel, the 2005 World all-around champion and currently the “technical lead” of USA Gymnastics’ high performance program, was made nearly 10 years after USA Gymnastics received the first in a series of complaints against Li in which gymnasts and their parents alleged over the ensuing decade that Li routinely abused and bullied athletes and then as a coach and judge, while under investigation by SafeSport, retaliated against and attempted to intimidate athletes, other judges, parents, and coaches and who have cooperated with the SafeSport investigation, according to interviews and USA Gymnastics and U.S. Center for SafeSport documents obtained by the Southern California News Group.
Gymnasts who trained under Li with Legacy Elite Gymnastics in Aurora, Illinois, and…
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