Working for Scale Is Never Safe in Women’s Gymnastics : Goodwill Games: Death of Christy Henrich hits home for former Olympian Kathy Johnson.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia —  Much has changed in women’s gymnastics since Kathy Johnson retired 10 years ago. The age and size of the competitors have gone down, and the degree of difficulty of the tricks they are expected to perform has gone up.

But, as a television commentator who visits the dressing rooms that once seemed like home to her, she has learned that one thing has remained the same. Too many girls are worried about their weight.

“I was hoping that the trend toward younger gymnasts would eliminate some of these problems, that they would get in the sport and get out before their bodies changed,” she said Friday at the Sport and Concert Complex, where she was watching women’s teams practice for the Goodwill Games.

“But I don’t think it’s made a difference. When I walk into the dressing room, I see these young, strong girls pinching the flesh on their thighs and hear them asking, ‘Do I look fat?’ I say, ‘Is that a joke?’ But it’s not.”

Obsession with diet and weight can be deadly serious, as was reaffirmed Tuesday when Christy Henrich, 22, died in a Kansas City, Mo., hospital.

Henrich, a member of the U.S. team in the 1989 World Championships, suffered for several years from eating disorders--anorexia nervosa and bulimia--before her vital organs succumbed. At the time of her death, she weighed less than 60 pounds.

Henrich’s death is a visible burden for many of the sport’s officials, coaches and athletes who are here, but perhaps no one needed to discuss it more than Johnson.

“It’s therapy,” she said.

Johnson, 34, of Burbank, spent eight years locked in potentially mortal combat with her own body, exercising it to extremes while starving herself in order to maintain her weight at less than 100 pounds.

One result was her dramatically delayed menstruation--amenorrhea--as she did not have her first period until she was 25. She also went through phases of anorexia and bulimia that accelerated after she retired.

“Overeating, undereating, bingeing, purging,” she said. “Once you get on that roller coaster, good luck trying to get off.”

Although Johnson did not begin competing until she was 12, relatively late for a female gymnast, she was small for her age and did not feel out of place among the younger novices.

But as she grew, it seemed as if her competitors shrank. At no time was that more apparent to her than when she was sent to a camp for juniors at 18. Even though she was still under five feet tall, she felt like an amazon among those tiny bodies.

Competing in her first World Championships the next year, she made the connection between low weight and high-level performance when the miniatures from Romania and the Soviet Union dominated.

“I became obsessed with weight,” she said. “I took some time off, took a couple of pounds off, and, when I returned to the gym, my coach said, ‘Hey, you look great.’ I liked hearing that. I thought, ‘Well, I can look even better.’

“I wanted to have a 12-year-old body. It’s easier to throw around 50 pounds instead of 90. That’s reality.”

In attempting to improve acrobatically, however, she discovered another reality. If she did not supply her body with fuel by eating properly, she lost power and strength necessary to propel herself.

She fell and almost broke her neck. Then she broke her elbow, an injury that doctors said would end her career.

She came back. So did her bad habits.

“I should have learned my lesson, but I was obsessive-compulsive,” she said. “You have to be. You don’t get to this level if you’re not going to the gym every day, doing the same routines, striving for perfection.

“When I started out, everything was about talent. I used to look at my friends and ask, ‘Why can’t they do these things I can?’ Everything came so easy for me.

“Then, when I got older and put on weight, I, all of a sudden, couldn’t do some of things I did before. I panicked. I thought, ‘I’m too heavy. If I were lighter, I would be a better gymnast.’ Every time I gained a pound or two, I felt like a blob. I felt like I couldn’t fly. I wanted to fly.”

She soared in the 1984 Summer Olympics. Johnson--24 years old, 5-0 1/2 and 98 pounds--won a silver medal in the team competition and a bronze on the balance beam.

That was the end of her gymnastics career, not the end of her struggle.

“In the year after the Olympics, I gained about 10 pounds,” she said. “When I would go to a function for Olympic athletes, I would hear people say, “ She was a gymnast?’ I realize now that they weren’t saying that at all, that that’s what I imagined they were saying. I just didn’t feel very good about myself.”

She got back on the roller coaster.

“I could have ended up killing myself,” she said. “But one day about three years after the Olympics, I realized that I had to have help. I called my brother, who was studying to be a doctor, and told him what I was going through.

“I didn’t know if it was so far gone that I couldn’t fix it, but I told him I was going to try. I wanted to do it myself. All I asked was that he keep in touch with me to ask how I was doing. If I had told him that I couldn’t beat it, he was going to make sure that I went for professional help.”

Today, Johnson is still a petite 104 pounds. But she said she has as much strength as she did at her peak as a world-class gymnast.

Johnson said that she realizes there are no easy answers for the problem in her sport, just as there are no easy answers for the problem in society.

“But the one thing we can’t do is deny that the problem exists,” she said. “I wouldn’t say it’s common in our sport, but there are things I see that I don’t like. Our athletes are predisposed to it because of the pressure that they are under.”

Her advice for parents, coaches and officials is to treat young gymnasts with respect, win or lose, so that they can retain their self-esteem, educate them about nutritional methods of keeping off pounds and look for early warning signs of a preoccupation with weight.

“I don’t think we should ignore the fact that weight is an important element in gymnastics,” she said. “You cannot be overweight and succeed. But no one should deal with it like I did.

“I wish I had never gone through that. My career would have been a lot easier, and I would have been a better gymnast. If I could keep kids today from going through some of the things I went through, God, I’d love that.”