Broken Kids: The Untold Story of Young Athletes | Storyteller
WORLD
3 min read
Broken Kids: The Untold Story of Young Athletes | StorytellerThis film exposes the brutal training methods and abuse young athletes endure from coaches and institutions while striving for elite results.
Broken Kids: The Untold Story of Young Athletes / TRT World
7 hours ago

[NOTE: Broken Kids: The Untold Story of Young Athletes available until August 25, 2025.]

In 1983, at the French Open Women’s Tennis Tournament at the Stade Roland Garros, Stefanie Maria Graf, better known as Steffi Graf, became the youngest-ever tennis player to compete in the main draw of a grand slam at the age of 13. She had turned pro one year earlier, in 1982, and she was to become a sensation for the next two decades. Steffi Graf learned how to swing a racket when she was three years old. Her father, Peter, coached her and controlled her schedule in order to protect her from burn out. Still, Steffi’s father had her train four hours a day, almost every day, and quit his job when he was convinced that his daughter was a prodigy and is likely to win prize money from her tennis career.

Journalists would later question whether Steffi Graf’s father was a monster or a protector. Western media at that time, in the 1980s, was obsessed with criticizing harsh training sports regimes in the Eastern European Bloc. These institutions were accused of taking young athletes from their families and recruiting them into specialized sports schools. They then went through intense physical and psychological pressure in training programs that prioritized medals over wellbeing. Many of them would end up suffering chronic injuries, burnout, and emotional trauma. Despite the rampant criticism of these practices by Western media, it seems that the lure of glory, medals and prize money is what stuck with societies falling prey to capitalism and fake dreams.

Steffi Graf was an anomaly in more ways than one. She loved and enjoyed the sport she excelled in. Throughout her career, she made more than $21 Million US Dollars in prize money. And she made it big in the world of tennis and into the Tennis Hall of Fame. While she has expressed wishes to have taken things “just a little easier” in her youth, Graf has been clear that she has no regrets and wouldn’t have changed a thing about her tennis career. But the majority of children who are forced to train to become high level athletes will never even come remotely close. The majority of these kids will never make it big, for the simple mathematical probability that medals and halls of fame are limited to an extremely small number of athletes worldwide. When we asked ChatGPT, “What percentage of all athletes who train to reach the Olympics actually end up winning medals?” The estimate varied between 0.05% (conservative estimate) and 0.27% (liberal estimate). The bitter truth is that the result of all this training is more likely to be –only- broken kids.

In the pursuit of producing elite level athletes today, childhoods are sacrificed. “Broken Kids: The Untold Story of Young Athletes” is an international investigation that sheds light on the widespread adoption of inhumane training methods in high-level sports. There are no specific legal protections today for our future gymnasts, swimmers, and tennis or football players from intensive sport practice. The result? Children as young as ten years old already suffer from eating disorders, burnout, or recurring injuries – among a host of other issues.

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SOURCE:TRT World
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