Olympic gymnast Aly Raisman said she was once forced to train while vomiting with the stomach flu

• Former US gymnast Aly Raisman said she was once forced to train despite having stomach flu.
• It wasn't uncommon to be told to carry on through illness or injury, she told the New Yorker.
• Raisman believes USA Gymnastics is 'rotten from the inside out.'

Former US gymnast Aly Raisman said she was once forced to train despite having been up all night vomiting with the stomach flu.

The six-time Olympic medalist, who retired from the sport in 2020, told the New Yorker that instead of being encouraged to take it easy while ill, she was made to train like everyone else.

"And not only that," Raisman, 27, said. "When you have the stomach bug, you lose weight. They were telling me, 'You look so good. You'd better not gain any weight.'"

The athlete said there was an "old-school mentality" among national training staff, with coaches thinking gymnasts would gain water weight from drinking too much water, so they were often dehydrated.

In May, Raisman's former teammate Laurie Hernandez told Insider she started binge-eating due to the verbal and emotional abuse from her coaches.

Gymnasts were often training on broken ankles or with fractured backs, Raisman said.

"Sometimes athletes don't know how bad it is until they start going into normal life and they see how they can be treated so much better," she said.

USA Gymnastics is 'rotten from the inside out,' Raisman said

Raisman has been an outspoken critic of the abuse she said she and other gymnasts suffered at the hands of their coaches, but she believes more needs to be done.

USA Gymnastics is "rotten from the inside out," and "not a good organization," Raisman said.

"Until there is a full understanding of what happened and who was involved, and how this was allowed to go on for so long, we can't have any confidence in a new USA Gymnastics or confidence that the culture has changed," she said. "In my opinion, I think that there has been a cover-up, and I think that we all deserve answers."

Despite having huge success as a gymnast, Raisman thinks she could have performed even better if she'd felt supported, rather than afraid.

"I think it's a no-brainer that you're going to do better when you're not being abused at the Olympics," she said.

USA Gymnastics did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.