By Clare E. Maness, J.D.
Undeniably, the last decade has seen monumental shifts in the management of sport in America across the spectrum—from Olympic sport to the NCAA. One of these shifts has been that of introducing into the Olympic ecosystem the U.S. Center for SafeSport and the corresponding rise in awareness of the need to address mistreatment in sport. A recent study from the Ohio State University contributes to the safe-sport culture, but before diving into the details of that study, it bears noting some broader aspects of the Olympic movement that have seen seismic shifts this year and that dovetail with issues of sporting culture, accessibility, and representation. Namely, in March, Kirsty Coventry of Zimbabwe was elected to become president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC)—and the IOC’s first female president (IOC, 2025). Much can be extolled with this selection, but the significance of this investiture is especially remarkable when juxtaposed against founding Olympic-movement sentiments that have occasionally appeared in litigation (and elsewhere, including early IOC materials) and that have represented less than progressive perspectives on sport and inclusivity. A notorious example of one of these expressions of an early modern-Olympic ethos came from the founder of the modern Games Pierre de Coubertin (Boulongne, 2000), who described his vision for the modern Olympics as one of “solemn and periodic exaltation of male athleticism with internationalism as a base, loyalty as a means, art for its setting, and female applause as reward” (Banerjee & Manna, 2020, p. 314; International Olympic Committee, 1912, p. 110–111; Martin v. Int’l Olympic Comm., 1984, p. 681). So President Coventry’s rise certainly represents a further step (perhaps even a revolutionary step) on the trajectory of change when it comes to leadership visions, accessibility of power, and breadth of respect within sport, or at least the Olympic sports ecosystem. And this specific sporting ecosystem should be broadly significant in America, given Congress’s charge to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) to promote and encourage physical fitness generally and general public participation in amateur athletic activities, under 36 U.S.C. § 220503(6)—not just elite participation and competition.
Against this background of remarkable change, then, and in considering the just-cited broader congressional charge to foster general physical fitness and amateur athletic activities, sports-law and sport-management practitioners and scholars may be interested in the study alluded to at the start of this article. Published in February in the International Journal of the Sociology of Leisure, that study is Sports‑Related Mistreatment in the U.S.: Retrospective Recognitions and Connections to Social Structural Locations, Childhood Contexts, and Adult Characteristics. It reports the results of research conducted by Mariah Warner and Chris Knoester, of the Ohio State University’s Department of Sociology. In many ways, this study arguably helps bring the Olympic safe-sport movement closer to the world of general recreational sporting activity, even to informal sporting settings. Media outlets reported it as showing that “Nearly 40% of adult Americans say they’ve experienced some type of sport-related mistreatment in their lives” (Grabmeier, 2025), but the work has more than just that data to offer. It considered American adults’ retrospective recognitions of sport-related mistreatment (including name calling, bullying, discrimination, and abuse) in a broad array of sporting settings. Using the National Sports and Society Survey (NSASS) and a sample of almost 4,000 respondents (N =3993), these researchers sought to increase understanding of the complexities of sport-related mistreatment, and the breadth of the sample provided a wide swath of responses. Sports and Society Initiative members of the Ohio State University conducted the NSASS in 2018 and 2019. Respondents were comprised of American Population Panel (APP) members, a collection of over 20,000 survey research volunteers. Warner and Knoester dove in, seeking to analyze social-structural location, childhood context, and adult-reported characteristics that may make some individuals more vulnerable to sport-related mistreatment, and to model the likelihood of experiencing sport-related mistreatment, using logistic regressions. Then, focusing on hate speech, discrimination, psychological or emotional, physical, and sexual mistreatment, they examined the prevalence of specific mistreatment.
Their findings revealed that sport-related mistreatment is common, with 38% of the NSASS respondents reporting that they had experienced some sort of sport-related mistreatment. Going into greater detail, the evidence gathered suggested a higher risk of mistreatment exists for males and for individuals who identify as a sexual minority, or face health problems or disabilities, or have encountered weight-related stigma. Sport-related mistreatment also appears more common for people who were less popular and less athletic as kids. While it occurrs across venues and settings, this mistreatment does crop up frequently in elite sport and more competitive settings. Overall, from the perspective of analyzing such mistreatment, “sports-related mistreatment experiences were generally not isolated and simplistic events” (Warner & Knoester, 2025, p. 226).
With regard to the sample of respondents, 72% identified as female, 26% as male, and 2% as nonbinary. The average age was 41. The study also gathered data on a host of other social background circumstances. Regarding sport specifically, 34% of respondents had played recreational sports, 50% had played school sports, 11% had played club or travel sports, and 7% had played church sports. The mean total years in organized sports was 3.89 (with a standard deviation of 4.52). Looking at adulthood, 28% of the respondents had played sports non-competitively in adulthood, 13% had played sports as “informal/competitive” (later explained to mean “informally but competitively”), 9% had played recreationally, and 3% had played at an elite level, defined as collegiate, Olympic, or professional (Warner & Knoester, 2025, p. 224–225). In the past year, 59% of respondents had played sports regularly.
Citing and building on the IOC’s November 2024 consensus statement on interpersonal violence and safeguarding in sport (Tuakli-Wosornu et al., 2024), Warner and Knoester’s study dovetailed with the IOC’s aims of synthesizing evidence on interpersonal violence in sport and evidence related to efforts directed at safeguarding in sport, and the IOC’s goals of introducing a new conceptual model of such violence and of offering more accessible safeguarding guidance to all stakeholders within the sport ecosystem. Warner and Knoester’s work also matched up well with the IOC’s conclusions that sport settings emphasizing mutual care, athlete-centrism, healthy relationships, trauma- and violence-informed care principles, diverse perspectives, and safe-sport metrics “will exemplify safe sport” (Tuakli-Wosornu et al., 2024, p. 1322). As the IOC consensus-statement writers said, “A shared responsibility between all within the sports ecosystem is required to advance effective safeguarding through future research, policy and practice” (Tuakli-Wosornu et al., 2024, p. 1322), and Warner and Knoester’s (2025) research adds to the evidence available for those within that ecosystem.
Warner and Knoester’s work also included a number of meaningful findings and details for anyone interested in investigation and litigation in the context of sport-related mistreatment and the safe-sport movement, and one of the study’s standout points in this regard is the prevalent reporting of mistreatment related to weight. In the study, 54% of the respondents in the sample reported weight as a perceived precipitator of mistreatment. Against the backdrop of the evidence they had gathered then, Warner and Knoester were clear: “Overall, these findings suggest that competitive contexts and contexts in which there is body shaming or a lack of inclusiveness may be particularly likely to foment sports-related mistreatment” (p. 234). Indeed, body shaming and issues of weight have often been featured in investigations and cases involving allegations made to the U.S. Center for SafeSport, both in the context of complaints made to the center and in complaints filed in court. For example, they feature in the materials cited in the plaintiffs’ complaint in Moore v. U.S. Center for SafeSport (2023) (involving a challenge to gymnastics-related allegations) that remains pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, and they were a part of the allegations made to the U.S. Center for SafeSport against gymnastics coaches Anna Li and Jiani Wu (Liddy, 2024) and Al Fong (Reid, 2023), all of which garnered significant media attention. This sort of allegation—related to weight and body shaming—is not limited to sports like gymnastics, of course. In 2021, prominent running coach Alberto Salazar was banned by the U.S. Center for SafeSport for allegations that included body-shaming conduct (as well as sexual and other misconduct) (Draper, 2021). With regard to appellate litigation, though, Lexis searches suggest that no cases explicitly involving body shaming or so-called “fat shaming” and investigations by the U.S. Center for SafeSport seem to have proceeded that far yet.
Warner and Knoester’s (2025) study did acknowledge the work’s limits: the study did not explore the sources of mistreatment (i.e., identities of perpetrators—were they coaches or athletes or other individuals) or the specific perceived reasons behind mistreatment or any details about the circumstances surrounding instances of mistreatment. (Of course, the literature Warner and Knoester cited on these topics did explore things like sources of abuse and the roles of coaches, parents, and others in perpetrating mistreatment.) In closing their work, Warner and Knoester made observations that may spark discussion for sports-law and sport-management practitioners and scholars, including these thoughts: “Undoubtedly, there is a need to improve sport offerings and experiences and the effects of sport structures, cultures, and interactions,” and “Our findings suggest that more inclusive and less competitive sport environments may be necessary for such changes to occur” (p. 235). Food for thought, indeed.
References
36 U.S.C. § 220503 (2020). https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/36/220503
Banerjee, A., & Manna, S. (2020). Women participation in the modern Olympic Games: A study. International Journal of Physical Education, Sports and Health, 7(6), 313–317. https://doi.org/10.22271/kheljournal.2020.v7.i6e.1937
Boulongne, Y.–P. (2000). Pierre de Coubertin and women’s sport. Women and Sport, 26, 23–26.
Draper, K. (2021, December 22). SafeSport Bars Alberto Salazar for Life, Citing Misconduct. The New York Times.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/22/sports/alberto-salazar-misconduct.html
Grabmeier, J. (2025, March 4). Nearly 4 of 10 Americans report sports-related mistreatment. ScienceDaily. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/03/250304113814.htm
International Olympic Committee. (1912, July). Les femmes aux Jeux Olympiques [Women at the Olympic Games]. In Revue Olympique (pp. 109–111). Olympic World Library. https://library.olympics.com/Default/doc/SYRACUSE/169679/revue-olympique-bulletin-trimestriel-du-comite-international-olympique-vol-79-juillet-1912
International Olympic Committee. (2025, March 2). Kirsty Coventry elected IOC president, the first female president in IOC history. https://www.olympics.com/ioc/news/kirsty-coventry-elected-ioc-president-the-first-female-president-in-ioc-history
Liddy, K. (2024, June 28). Sports watchdog under scrutiny as former U.S. gymnast facing misconduct allegations judges Olympic trials. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/sports/olympics/safesport-anna-li-gymnastics-olympic-trials-judge-rcna143431
Martin v. International Olympic Committee, 740 F.2d 670 (9th Cir. 1984).
Moore v. U.S. Center for SafeSport, No. 1:23-CV-11681 (E.D. Mich. July 13, 2023).
Reid, S. M. (2023, February 16). Gymnastics coach Al Fong under investigation by U.S. Center for SafeSport. The Orange County Register. https://www.ocregister.com/2023/02/16/al-fong-under-investigation-by-u-s-center-for-safesport/
Tuakli-Wosornu, Y. A., Burrows, K., Fasting, K., Hartill, M., Hodge, K., Kaufman, K., Kavanagh, E., Kirby, S. L., MacLeod, J., G., Mountjoy, M., Parent, S., Tak, M., Vertommen, T., & Rhind, D. J. A. (2024). IOC consensus statement: Interpersonal violence and safeguarding in sport. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 58(22), 1322–1344. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2024-108766
Warner M., & Knoester, C. (2025). Sports-related mistreatment in the U.S.: Retrospective recognitions and connections to social structural locations, childhood contexts, and adult characteristics. International Journal of the Sociology of Leisure, 8, 211–240. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41978-025-00176-6
Clare Maness has practiced federal criminal defense since she earned her J.D. magna cum laude from the Ave Maria School of Law in 2006 (where she served as a senior editor for the law review). She began her legal career with the Office of the Federal Public Defender for the Western District of Michigan and is now in private practice. She is admitted to practice in the State of New Mexico, various federal district and circuit courts, and in the U.S. Supreme Court. As a student in the sport-management PhD program at Troy University’s Sorrell College of Business, she focuses her research on sports law, policy, governance, and criminology. In her spare time, she competes in archery in the professional division.
