Bela Karolyi, the polarizing coach who helped launch gymnasts to Olympic stardom, dies at 82

Bela Karolyi, the legendary and controversial Romanian American gymnastics coach who helped lead Mary Lou Retton, Nadia Comaneci and Kerri Strug to Olympic gold, has died, USA Gymnastics announced. He was 82.

Bela Karolyi, the legendary and controversial Romanian American gymnastics coach who helped lead Mary Lou Retton, Nadia Comaneci and Kerri Strug to Olympic gold, has died, USA Gymnastics announced. He was 82. Karolyi, along with his wife and world-class coaching partner Marta Karolyi, is credited with catapulting US women’s gymnastics to unprecedented success – albeit in ways some described as abusive or “sadistic” and that drew legal scrutiny to their famed Texas training mecca. Still, Bela Karolyi remained unapologetic to the end for the methods he used to blaze a path to sports glory. “My attitude … is never to be satisfied,” he once told Texas Monthly. “Never enough, never.” Bela Karolyi didn’t start as a gymnast. A Romanian national junior boxing champion, he competed in the 1956 Olympics in the hammer throw. Then, while studying at the Romania College of Physical Education, he took a mandatory gymnastics course – and failed. Fueled by anger, Karolyi became consumed by the sport. And by his senior year, he was coaching the school’s women’s gymnastics team, whose star Marta Enoss would become his wife and professional ally. The couple spent the late 1960s to early 1970s in the socialist Eastern Bloc trying to bolster their coaching credentials, including starting a gymnastics class at an elementary school. They were later asked to create a national gymnastics school and scouted for young talent among kindergartners at recess.