Got that right, toots!

As a woman who hated the article, your attempt to paint my disdain for Sey as some kind of feminist failure is depressing and disgusting. If a man had written this it would have been just as egregious.

By characterizing every criticism of accomplished women as an example of misogyny you demean the very cause you think you're fighting for.

I think we have a winner for non-sequitur of the day!

"if you are driven, focused and female they call it narcissism. If you were a male, of course, it would be genius :/"

Wow...where did THAT come from??

We may not have actually worked 12 hours a day at gymnastics or swimming, but we spent time working on other projects and did enough physical work to be able to understand the aches and pains and frustration of having to meet the arduous challenges of what the gymnasts and swimmers did. That's why people like to watch it and cheer them on so hard. It's called "empathy". You should probably stop hiding in a room feeling superior to people who do not have the same abilities and learn to empathize with their challenges. You'd be surprised how hard people work at things besides gymnastics.

Top search result on Google.

the venom was so thick I couldn't even stand to read the majority of it & I'm talking about the letters, not the article

Perhaps you should have paid more attention when you read.

you evidently aren't allowed to compete, if you are driven, focused and female they call it narcissism. If you were a male, of course, it would be genius

Bzzt. Swing and a miss. The vast majority of those complaining aren't complaining about her being driven, focused and female. They're complaining about telling the rest of us that she hates us and that our pitiful attempts at athletics have nothing on what she did. And several people have posted about other athletes that are jackasses like Ms. Sey. They're male and still jackasses for the same reasons.

Yuck, you are really an awful, graceless snob. At least this is out in the open now so all those people you've watched sports with now know what you think of them and can make informed decisions about socializing with you in the future.

I contrast your article with a guy I met at a rock-climbing gym last Saturday, some dude who looked like one of those skinny guys who can lift a car over his head because it turns out they're constructed entirely of flat muscle. This was only my third time bouldering, and I've never had arm strength anyway (one reason why I sucked as a gymnast, which yes in fact I "did" from ages 6 through 11, competing on two teams even).

So anyway, this guy came in with all the equipment for top-roping and all the stuff I don't know how to do (yet) and as I was getting ready to leave he made some comment to a friend of his like "she's got obliques!" and I caught him looking at me. He seemed kind of sheepish and then said "sorry man" and offered me a cookie, so clearly they had been watching my sorry attempt to scramble up and over the top of one of the courses (a V0+, haha!)

So we started chatting and he said he boulders all the time in Malibu where he lives and I replied that I was only just starting and didn't have much arm strength. His reply? "You'll get there, you're already strong!" Then he offered me another cookie and told me to keep working at it, and gave me some pointers on a good climbing spot somewhere north of where we were, and another one out in Joshua Tree where I'm going to be in October. Awesome!

That's a class act, Jennifer Sey. You are anything but.

Except, Jennifer Sey is not a child. Maybe she was a child when she won the Nationals in 1986. She is an adult now, if and she won't accept some responsibility for her continuing bitterness and anger, who will?

I don't feel sorry for a has-been who decides to take out her anger on her fans... ie, us, the "common people," people with whom she has never interacted, when her anger would be much more deservingly directed at the people who pushed her into this "sport" that turned her into a pill-popping, bitter, neurotic adult who is apparently so traumatized by her glorious sport that anyone who hasn't broken limbs or been screamed at by coaches does not merit her respect.

Wow...where did THAT come from??

It is the female equivalent of Brightstar65.

Jennifer,

If you had been a professional athlete, you probably would have said that an amateur athlete has no business commenting on the trials and tribulations of sport. I agree with your self-assessment of being a condescending jerk. I would add insufferable to the list, and encourage you to wonder how a Pulitzer prize winner might judge you for your "writing".

I just watched the YouTube of this person breaking her leg.

I have never had gymnastics training, but I can pretty safely say that I too could have fallen off that bar and broken by leg.

Does that make me elite?

And does anyone think that, e.g., Nadia Comaneci would be graceless enough to look down on this B- "elite" if they ever happened to be stuck on a plane together?

So what about all the former amateur athletes who gave "110%", who sacrificed, worked hard, suffered through injuries, experienced moments of pride and moments of humiliation, but yet were never good enough to rise to the international stage? Are you going to tell them they are not athletes?

As a young adult, I swam on a city team until I was 15 years old. When I started swimming competitively, I was under 5 feet tall and was probably only 5'3" when I stopped. It wasn't an issue because at that age everyone was short. But at 15 years old, all my competitors shot up like weeds and I didn't. I was swimming against guys who would develope bodies like Michael Phelps and go on to swim for major college teams. I stopped competing for two reasons but my size was probably not the major factor in the short term. I probably would have made my high school team and been the plucky guy on the bench who gave it his all but just didn't have what it took (72"+ wingspan). The main reason I quit is because I had other extracurricular activities that I loved as much but only had the time and money to do one.

So when someone says "I swam in highschool," maybe you can look back at your past achievements and visualize all those hardworking girls you left in the dust and empathize the person who put in just as much effort as you and who suffered but just wasn't good enough.