Béla Károly

Béla Károlyi (Hungarian: [ˈbeːlɒ ˈkaːroji]; September 13, 1942 – November 15, 2024) was a gymnastics coach and an ethnic Hungarian Romanian-American. Early in his coaching career he developed the Romanian centralized training system for gymnastics.

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Béla Károlyi
Born	September 13, 1942 Kolozsvár, Hungary (now Cluj-Napoca, Romania)
Died	November 15, 2024 (aged 82)
Citizenship	Hungary, Romania, United States
Alma mater	Romania College of Physical Education
Occupation	Gymnastics coach
Years active	c. 1956–1997
Employer(s)	Romanian Gymnastics Federation, U.S. Gymnastics Federation
Known for	Romanian centralized gymnastics training system and coach to European, World and Olympic gymnasts
Spouse	Márta Erőss ​ (m. 1963)​
Children	Andrea Wise

One of his earliest protégés was Nadia Comăneci, the first Olympic Games gymnast to be awarded a perfect score. Living under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu, Károlyi frequently clashed with Romanian officials. He and his wife defected to the United States in 1981.

Since their arrival in the United States, Béla and his wife Márta Károlyi were credited with transforming the coaching of gymnastics in the US and bringing major international success. They were each a coach for the United States women’s national gymnastics team, as well as national team coordinators for United States gymnastics at the Olympic Games. They have been severely criticized for their coaching style, which many gymnasts have called abusive. They claim to have been unaware that Larry Nassar, the national gymnastics team doctor who was convicted of sexual assault of minors, was assaulting young female gymnasts in their care at their Karolyi Ranch training facility in the Sam Houston National Forest in Texas. Athlete A, a documentary about the scandal, is a 2020 film which covers the Karolyis and their ranch.

Károlyi coached many notable national, European, Olympic gymnasts as well as those from the World Gymnastics Championships including Nadia Comăneci, Ecaterina Szabo, Mary Lou Retton, Julianne McNamara, Betty Okino, Teodora Ungureanu, Kim Zmeskal, Kristie Phillips, Dominique Moceanu, Phoebe Mills, and Kerri Strug. He coached nine Olympic champions, fifteen world champions, sixteen European medalists, and six U.S. national champions. He was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 1997. Béla and Márta Károlyi as a coaching team were inducted into the US Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 2000.

Béla Károly was born in Kolozsvár, Hungary (now Cluj-Napoca, Romania). Skilled as an athlete, he became a national junior boxing champion and a member of the Romanian hammer throwing team. He enrolled at the Romania College of Physical Education, studying and practicing gymnastics after having had trouble with a mandatory skills test in the sport.

In his senior year at the college, Károlyi coached the women’s gymnastics team, whose star was Márta Erőss. They later started a relationship and married in 1963. They moved to a small town in the coal-mining region where Béla had grown up, where they started a gymnastics class at the town’s elementary school. Later the government invited them to create a national school for gymnastics.

Romania’s famed centralized training program has its roots in the 1950s; Bela Károlyi helped develop the program further in the late 1960s and early 1970s. He worked as a coach at the boarding school in Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej (now named Oneşti), training young girls specially chosen for their athletic potential. One of the first students at the school was six-year-old Nadia Comăneci, who lived near the town and commuted from home.

Károlyi debuted as an international coach in 1974. He had to persuade the Romanian gymnastics federation to have Comăneci and his other athletes named to the 1975 European Championships and the 1976 Olympic team, because the federation favored athletes from the competing Dinamo club in Bucharest, Romania. At the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, he was the head coach of the Romanian squad and most of the members of the team were Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej athletes. The team took the silver medal and Comăneci was one of the outstanding performers of the Games, scoring the first-ever perfect 10 in Olympic competition. Altogether, they won seven medals in Montreal: three gold, two silver, and two bronze.

After Comăneci’s astounding success in Montreal, Károlyi’s importance as a coach was recognized. He was named head coach of the Romanian team at the 1980 Olympics. However, he came under fire from Romanian officials because of his score protests at several international meets, including the 1980 Olympics.

Károlyi died on November 15, 2024. His death was announced by USA Gymnastics the following day, and the cause of death was not specified.

• Károlyi, Béla; Richardson, Nancy Ann (1994). Feel No Fear: The Power, Passion, and Politics of a Life in Gymnastics. Hyperion. ISBN 0-7868-6012-X.
• Ryan, Joan (2000). Little Girls in Pretty Boxes. Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 0446676829.
• Móra, László (2016). Károlyi Béla – Dikta-torna. Budapest. ISBN 978-615-80135-9-8.
• Olaru, Stejărel (2021). Nadia și Securitatea. Bucarest. ISBN 978-606-95197-0-7.

Béla Károlyi was in the episode “At the Edge of the Worlds”, in the ABC Family series Make It or Break It. He portrayed Coach Sasha Belov’s father.

After the Olympics, Károlyi clashed again with Romanian Federation officials, and tension escalated. During a 1981 gymnastics tour, Romanian team choreographer Géza Pozsár and the Károlyis defected and sought political asylum in the United States, temporarily leaving their seven-year-old daughter Andrea with relatives in Romania. They settled in Texas.

Márta Károlyi remained the national team coordinator for USA Gymnastics until 2016. During the 2008 Summer Olympics, Béla Károlyi appeared as a guest commentator for NBC News. He claimed that the Chinese women’s gymnastics team was cheating by using athletes who did not meet the minimum age requirement. He and his wife said, “They are using half-people. One of the biggest frustrations is, what arrogance. These people think we are stupid.”

Károlyi said that he disagreed with the age limit, and called for it to be abolished by the International Olympic Committee. He said that if a gymnast was good enough to earn a spot at the Olympics or World Championships, he or she deserves to go. He praised the Chinese for their competitiveness and skills during the competitions, and said that he objected to the possibility that they were being used by their government. “They do good gymnastics and are a good service for the sport,” he said. “They have the ultimate effective training program. That’s why I am more upset that they are cheating. They don’t need cheating. They would be just as good with a lineup of eligible athletes.”

While Károlyi has not been personally implicated in the USA Gymnastics sex abuse scandal which was reported beginning in 2016, gymnasts said that many instances of sexual abuse perpetrated by former team doctor Larry Nassar occurred at the Karolyi Ranch.

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Nassar reportedly groomed athletes for abuse and gained their trust in part by covertly providing them with food in defiance of Károlyi’s strict dietary guidelines. Some gymnasts also said that the strict discipline and conditions at the ranch made them feel inhibited from reporting Nassar’s abuses. As a result of the scandal, in July 2017 USA Gymnastics canceled its plans to buy Karolyi Ranch. In January 2018 USA Gymnastics announced they were cutting ties with Karolyi Ranch altogether.