From People:
“He manhandled me in rehearsals from the start, pushing me, whacking my stomach, bending my arms roughly,” the Olympian, 31, writes in Solo: A Memoir of Hope.
“I thought that was just how it went – how dancers worked with each other,” she continues. “But it kept getting worse. … One day, Maks was trying to put me in a certain position and hit my stomach so hard with his open palm that I had a red handprint there for the rest of the day.”
Solo, goalie for the gold medal-winning U.S. women’s soccer team at the 2012 Summer Olympics, says that ABC offered her a new pro partner after Chmerkovskiy slapped her during rehearsal for the show’s 2011 Halloween episode.
“He wanted my head in a specific position. To achieve that, he slapped me across the face. Hard,” she writes, according to USA Today.
She declined a new partner, she says, because “she didn’t want to end [his] career.”
… Um. Wow?
This is what Maksim had to say in unofficial response via Twitter:
Always hated hypocrites and liars…but when someone is both AND an opportunist, I just feel bad for them. Can’t win at someone’s expense…
This is a whole lot of information to process. If it is true, why wasn’t it brought to the attention of the public, or at least law enforcement, while it was happening? Why wait so long, and why put it in a memoir, when something could have been done about it at a much sooner juncture? If it isn’t true … why would Hope Solo go ahead and make these kinds of allegations? Because come on. They’re pretty damn serious if you ask me. “Slapped across the face”? “Hard”? Yikes.
That’s really serious. I mean, I’ve worked with dancers as a teenager, and you expect them to be a little mean (because they’re hungry). But that’s not “oh, that was rude” behavior. That’s “I genuinely hope that you die in a fire” behavior.
Let me begin by saying thusly….if this indeed did happen, she should have spoken up when it occurred, no woman should be treated in that manner. However, this is Hope Solo we are talking about….diva/glam-hag and fame whore. If any other player on the USA womens squad pulled the shit she has, they would have been benched. Not to mention the fact that she pissed dirty prior to the Olympics and only received a public notice. She should have been suspended for a minimum of two months. Great soccer player, shitty human being!!
Does she get along with anybody?
Just shut up and go away Hope. No one believes what you have to say.
Uh, hate to break the naysayers bubble, but there’s video of “wonderful” Maks manhandling her roughly. He definitely needs a bitch slap upside HIS head.
Doesn’t matter how bad of a dancer or what she says, you don’t push, shove or manhandle a woman. EVER. If a guy does that, he’s just shown he’s a pussy, like Chris Brown.
Thank you! The video is all over ET and Extra, find it and add it to this. Say what you have to say about Hope but that dude WAS a total ass on camera and was extremely rough with her, not surprising it continued off camera to a higher degree. Also, the writers on this blog tend to bother me with their essential vilification of women who are reportedly treated poorly by men with their “why didn’t they speak up?” talk. If you guys knew ANYTHING about battered women you’d know they often DON’T speak up because of the mental abuse and intimidation that comes with being abused. All you do is rag on women like Rihanna and (to a lesser degree) Hope for what they say. EVERY TIME. As a woman who dealt with an abusive partner and is still working to get over it 5 years later, it’s pretty damn offensive.
Rant over.
I don’t think that the writers have that position at all. There is a huge difference between an abusive boyfriend or husband and an abusive dance partner, and it’s reasonable to ask why she didn’t speak up to the producers at the time.
But I’m sure that she had concerns over the show and perhaps her contract. More importantly, it is HIS responsibility to not be evil. The world would be a better place without him.
(And I know where you’re coming from — my father was a violent monster, but, growing up, I didn’t think that anyone could help me. And I’m still having trouble getting over it, though I’ve had no contact with him for years)