following a rapid offensive by the taliban who've taken over nine provincial capitals. tens of thousands of civilians have fled their homes — and hundreds have died in recent weeks. in greece, residents have fled 20 more villages as wildfires continue amid a heatwave across the mediterranean. dozens have died in algeria and italy may have registered europe's hottest ever temperature — 48.8 degrees celsius. a british man working at the uk's embassy in berlin has appeared in court accused of spying for russia. prosecutors say the man, who's been identified only as david s, passed on documents to russian intelligence in exchange for cash. it followed a joint investigation by german and british authorities. now on bbc news, it's hardtalk with stephen sackur.

welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. the athletic excellence we saw at the tokyo olympics will live long in the memory, but so will the moment the brilliant us gymnast simone biles chose not to compete, to safeguard her mental and physical health. us gymnastics, still reeling from the repercussions of a sex abuse scandal, illustrates what can go wrong when gold medals and glory are put above care of individual athletes. my guest is former us olympic champion gymnast aly raisman. is there a wider lesson for elite sport in the shame of american gymnastics?

aly raisman in massachusetts, welcome to hardtalk. hi, how are you? i am very well. it's a pleasure to have you on this show. let me begin by asking you what it was like for you as one of us gymnastics�* most decorated olympians, the captain of the gymnastic team in rio 2016, what was it like for you watching your team compete from afar in tokyo just a couple of weeks back? i think there was a lot of different emotions. i just want to first start off and say how proud i am

of all the gymnasts. it was really... i think there was a lot of different things going through my mind. i'm very proud of all of their hard work, very proud of them for doing the best they could, very proud of simone but obviously very heartbroken for her, as well. i can't imagine how difficult of a decision that must have been for her to decide to not compete or not finish the competition and the team final, and just really impressed with her, because there's so much pressure to be this perfect athlete. and i think sometimes people forget she's human, butjust really impressed with the other gymnasts on the us team, as well, and obviously so excited for sunisa, who won the all—around, and jade won floor, and then, simone came back and won the bronze on beam. and then, of course, the team won silver. but i also have to say

it was so awesome watching the sportsmanship at this olympic games. that was really my favourite part of the olympics, was watching that. it was so beautiful and it was so cool to see gymnasts from other countries be on the podium that we're not used to seeing. so it was really awesome. you talk there about simone, and obviously simone biles is a name that we all know, possibly the world's most famous gymnast and, i know, a friend and team—mate of yours in years gone by. now, she withdrew, as you said, for her own well—being, both physical and mental. i just wonder whether you think it's fair to, in assessing the decision she made, to link that with the fact that simone, just as yourself, has been through the most terrible trauma in recent years linked to the sex scandal in us gymnastics. our minds all are so different. we're all so...

there's no two people that are alike. so i don't know. and i don't want to speak for simone, so only simone can answer that question. i think that's absolutely the fair and right answer. she was asked it, you know, after she withdrew, on tv, and she said she thought about it hard. she said, "in the back of my mind, probably, yes, it was there because there are certain triggers, and it could have been a factor." and ijust... again, i wonder now to bring it to you, whetherfor you, despite the fact that the trial of larry nassar, the doctor who worked so closely with the us national team, who was eventually convicted of a string of sex and child pornography crimes in 2018, although that is some years ago, whetherfor you in your own mind it is still a trauma that you deal with all the time. yeah, absolutely. it's something that even

after this interview, i'll probably feel sick for the rest of the day orfor a few days. i feel even just nauseous thinking about it right now. it's something that affects me. and i think with healing, it's not one size fits all. there are certain days where i wake up and i feel better and there are other days where i feel something triggers me a lot more easily. but i think any time i do an interview, it's really... it's hard. and it's something that unfortunately is still an ongoing issue with usa gymnastics and the united states olympic committee. so it feels like it's been going on for a very long time. i reported my abuse around six years ago, so it's been a very, very long process. and the way that a survivor heals can be linked to how their abuse is handled.

so this dragging on and on and the organisation's not handling it the right way definitely makes it really, really difficult, because i don't want to have to keep talking about it. but i think when you have organisations that only prioritise their reputation, money and medals, doing media is a really big part of helping to effectuate change and putting that pressure on them. so any time we get to do interviews, we're extremely grateful. i'm very grateful that you're having me on this massive platform, because i think every time that i do an interview, i'm always hoping maybe this will be the one that somebody will help us and someone will do the right thing, because the reality is, is when i was younger — and if you look back decades, all the gymnasts needed wasjust one adult to do the right thing and to help protect us, and we didn't have that. i don't know everything that happened. he was first working there in 1997 — and i say

"he" because i don't want to say his name, which is another example of how triggering and hard it is for me to talk about. but this goes back decades, and we need an independent investigation to understand why, so i and the other survivors can feel that we can believe in a safer future for the sport of gymnastics. aly, i really respect what you're saying about the triggering and the continued trauma, so i don't want to push this too far, but i do think our audience around the world will want to hear your explanation as to how the silence around what he was doing and, as you say, it went on for many, many years — the silence, that wall of silence only began to crumble in 2015—16. so people will wonder how that wall of silence was maintained and why you — and you were still a child when this began to happen to you — why there was no way in which you could find an avenue to express what was going on.

yeah, i think that's a really important thing for people to understand. something i've learned, though, about mental health, about healing, about trauma is that we never know what someone else is going through. and i think it can be easy for people on the outside looking in to think that they know all the facts or think that, "oh, it would've been so easy for someone to speak up." but if you think about... there was a paedophile working in usa gymnastics for decades, and i believe the first report of abuse was in 1997. so when we would go to training camp, it was mandatory to get treated by larry. and i'm going tojust say his name so there's no confusion. and if there was a problem

at training camp or wherever we were travelling for usa gymnastics, we had to go to him. and he was the doctor. he was also the olympic doctorfor the us. so what i try to explain to people is i know many of the gymnasts have come forward, but not everyone, so i want to be careful with my wording because i know not everyone has said that it happened to them. so there are some perhaps that he didn't abuse. but you have to imagine from the time that i would go to training camp as a young gymnast for years when this person is doing the same type of what he called treatment but was actually abuse to a lot of your friends and team—mates, it becomes normalised in the most horrible way. and when you are young and you don't know anything differently, it's really hard to know, but there were times

where people would speak up. i don't want people to think that people weren't speaking up. and, you know, with being a survivor, there are some survivors that wait to come forward decades. they wait 50 years or they never come forward. and that's because our society doesn't give a safe place for survivors to feel comfortable to come forward, because, as i said, the way a survivor heals can be linked to how their abuse is handled. so i don't think people understand that if you are a survivor and you share with someone that you've been abused, and that person says they're not supportive and they don't believe you, that does so much to a person's mental health and self—worth in the worst way that it could prevent them from ever sharing it again. so, there were gymnasts that spoke up many times over the years, and child protective services was aware, law enforcement was aware, the fbi was aware. i mean, there was law enforcement that was aware, and there was also many times where law enforcement would say to the survivors, "you're

wrong, this didn't happen." and so, when survivors are constantly told, "you're wrong," it's already confusing enough to be a survivor because there's so much grooming and manipulation that goes into, sometimes, abuse. it's different for everyone. but in my situation, there was grooming, there was gift—giving. it was a lot of manipulation where, you know, there was also times where we would try to say something and we were told that you're wrong and never to speak badly about him again, so then i would feel, "well, then i'm wrong and i feel guilty for mistrusting a doctor." and, you know, ifelt so ashamed of myself for thinking bad of someone. so i wish i could give you this really simple answer, but it's so complicated. and the reality is, it's very, very hard to speak up because a lot of times survivors are shamed and told they're wrong, and they're not believed. but people also go to great

lengths to protect the abuser. and usa gymnastics and the united states olympic committee, in my opinion, went to great lengths to protect him. and that's why i'm saying we need an independent investigation to understand what happened. aly, that's exactly what i want to get to now, because, again, just to finish the story of this individual, dr larry nassar is, of course, in prison. he was sentenced to well over 100 years on different federal and state convictions. thejudge, in fact, at the time of sentencing said, "i just signed your death warrant" — but you say that is in no way the end of this story and this fight for accountability and justice. and i wonder where you think this fight should and will end. you know, i ask myself when and where it will end, too. i mean, it's really been such a long process.

and i think back to whoever the survivor was in 1997 that reported it and was obviously... that was not handled in the right way. and then, the survivor or the adult who reported to child protective services in the early 2000s — i think about all of these people who tried to protect so many people and were just ignored. so, it's really... sorry to interrupt, aly, but is your contention that there was a cover—up which has yet to be fully exposed? in my opinion, i believe there was a cover—up. and we need the answers to understand. i think that it needs to go back decades to understand how many people knew about him and why nothing was done. yeah, i think that there's still an issue with the organisations,

the lack of accountability even today, the lack of support for survivors is just... it's devastating and it needs to change. there's a lack of leadership in usa gymnastics. and i think that it's the same thing with the united states olympic committee. i want to leave aside, for a moment, the horrific sex crimes of dr larry nassar and the fallout and repercussions of that specific crime. i want to talk to you about maybe lessons that can be learned from your experience and us elite gymnastic experience of a particular approach to training, to prioritising creating gold medal winners, because you and many others were trained in a regime which, now it's been scrutinised, looks almost unbelievably harsh, even cruel. do you think that the pursuit of gold medals in your era —

let's say from 2010 right through the next sort of eight years — was it abusive of athletes? i think that there was a culture that enabled a paedophile to thrive. and i think that it was a culture of fear and... i feel today, i am a completely different person than i was when i was competing. i felt like when i was competing, i didn't trust myself or my own voice the way that i think it's important for anyone to. and ifelt, like, because... ijust felt like i had to be perfect all the time, and if i wasn't perfect, my whole entire self—worth was wrapped around that.

and i think that's a really unhealthy mind—set for an athlete or anybody, even if, you know, something at work where your self—worth is defined by how much money you make or a promotion that you do or don't get. it's really difficult to navigate life like that. so, to be specific, i'm genuinely asking because i think it's fascinating to see how maybe elite athletics is going to have to change. but here's a quote from you in 2016, when you were the team captain at us gymnastics, i believe you won the team gold. you were known as the final five in that team because i think it was... obviously it turned out to be your last appearance, but it was also the last time that marta karolyi was your head coach. and she, of course, part of the duo that were famous as these tough coaches of us gymnasts. and at the end, of marta karolyi, you said, "without her, none of this would have been possible. we wanted to do this, win the gold for her because she was with us there every single day."

now, then, when you were obviously much younger, it sounds like you sort of bought into and believed in this sort of ultra—tough approach to training elite athletes. i just wonder if you've changed your mind. well, ifelt like, you know, just in general, separate from that quote that you just read, i think in general, when you're competing under an organisation, and ifelt like i would compete out of fear and i just wanted to make it seem like i was ok all the time and i didn't want to make waves. but to be clear, aly, are you saying that throughout your amazing success as one of america's greatest gymnast olympians, you were driven by fear, you were competing out of fear? yes, absolutely. because i felt like nothing besides a gold medal was enough, and i think that even sometimes the way

that the pressure even from the media orjust our society is that it's this fear of, if i don't win, it doesn't matter, it's not good enough. and so, i definitely did it out of fear because it's so much pressure and it's terrifying, the fear of letting people down. so when we reflect on what simone biles did at the tokyo olympics, maybe you could talk of other sports, what naomi osaka, the brilliant tennis player, did by withdrawing from key grand slams this year on the grounds of protecting her mental health, do you think something really important and profound is changing in the way athletes are speaking up for themselves and protecting themselves? i think if i look at it from an outside point of view, because i personally don't know naomi — i think she's incredible, i'm a big fan of her and i fully support her. and i was not there with simone, i wasn't training with her.

so i don't know exactly what was happening. but from an outside perspective, i think it's really great to see that the media and the support on social media for naomi and simone. i was really glad to see just how much people are supporting both of them, because i think that every time someone speaks up and someone else supports them, it opens the door for someone else to feel comfortable to share their own experiences of what they're going through. so i think as a society, i think we're definitely heading in the right direction. i would be curious if simone and naomi, how they feel about it, because they were the ones that made those big decisions and wondering if they felt supported and... if i canjust dig into that a little bit — what did you think and what would your message be to those conservative talk—show hosts in america who called simone biles "selfish" and "a quitter," and

commentators like piers morgan here in the uk who said that fundamentally they were showing weakness rather than strength, and that winning was the thing that mattered, and you had to go through the pain to show the endurance, suck it up to win — what would you say to that sort of commentary? well, i think that in life, what i've learned from being in the public eye is that no matter what you do — you could do something with the most incredible intention, and ijust think it's impossible for everyone to agree with you or support every single thing that you do. and i think that mental health and abuse, and trauma is such a difficult thing to talk about. and i think it's such a difficult thing to talk about because there are still so many people out there who don't understand it. and i think that's what makes it sometimes so scary for people to speak up

and share their experiences, because of the fear of someone not supporting them or shaming them, or not believing them. but i think that i personally saw so much support for naomi and simone, and i know it can be really hard to focus on the positive. and sometimes it's easy to — if you see 100 positive articles and you see one negative one, it's sometimes easy to focus on that one negative one. but i think that both of them, what both of them have done... and i was thinking about, i'm sure when both of them made those announcements, it was so out there in the media that thinking about how many people around the world are suffering in silence. and i wonder if both of them saved some lives that day. there's a lot of people out there that are really struggling. and maybe there was people out there that said, "i'm comfortable now to get help because i saw these two amazing athletes do this

on the biggest stage in the world." and i think that's what's important to focus on. i don't know if we'll live in a world where every single person is 100% supportive of, or understands mental health. but i also think it's important to remember we will never know what naomi or simone were dealing with, or are dealing with. and it's easy for people to sit on the outside and think they know, but we don't. and it's so much pressure. also, there's such a small percentage of athletes who understand what it's like to have that immense pressure on them. and it's all—consuming and it's very, very hard. so i think it's really hard tojudge that. aly, if i may, we're out of time. i just want to end — and forgive me for the intrusive question — but it's a personal question, given everything you've said today and all of your personal experience, if... it's hypothetical, but if you are to have a child one day who exhibits great

athletic talent as a very young child, would you want them to go into elite sport the way you did when you were very young? you know, ithink that itjust depends. i also want to mention i do love gymnastics so much, and i know a lot of this interview was very negative towards parts of the sport. but i do want to mention i love gymnastics so much, and i have so many incredible memories even from the olympics and competing. i have incredible team—mates and friendships that i made over the years, so i... i want to have kids one day, but it's not anywhere near in the immediate future, so i'm not sure. i'm hoping by the time i have kids, that things are continuing to move in the right direction as a whole for mental health and the conversations, and that there will have been a full independent investigation on usa gymnastics, the united states olympic committee, that i feel confident having my kid do the sport if they want to.

aly raisman, i thank you so much for answering all my questions and for being on hardtalk. thank you very much. thank you so much. thanks. hello. we provisionally saw a new temperature record in europe on wednesday — 48.8 celsius recorded in sicily. the exceptional heat shown by the red colours here in this chart transfer a bit westwards across the med into the weekend, with record—breaking heat for spain and portugal. cast your eyes further north, though, across the uk, the blues appearing back on the charts. temperatures dropping below normal once again — so a cooler end to the week across the uk, and it will be blustery at times, mainly because of this area of low pressure — out to

the west at the moment, but it will track across the north. through the night and into the morning, though, this weather front will bring some cloud and patchy rain into southern areas, keeping temperatures up in the mid—teens for some. but a much fresher start across many parts in the uk, but a sunny start for the vast majority. and for many, we'll see some good, sunny spells throughout the day, but cloud amounts will increase at times in the south, spreading into wales, the midlands, and through the day, northern ireland, western scotland seeing batches of showers pushing in, some of those becoming heavy and thundery. only the odd one reaching eastern scotland and northern parts of england, as well as the isle of man. temperatures here in the teens into maybe the low mid—20s again across the south and east. but it will be a windy end to the day across parts of scotland, northern ireland, winds close to gale force across these coastal districts. further heavy, thundery showers rattling in notjust through the evening, but overnight, as well. head further south, most places will be dry, some clear skies around, and a slightly fresher night across some southern areas compared to what we'll have to start thursday morning. so, into friday we go, temperatures widely still in double figures,

so not desperately cold. but it's another story of sunshine and blustery showers across scotland and northern ireland. a bit windierfor england and wales on friday, too, and we will still see the chance of some lingering cloud, especially towards southern counties of england, bringing the odd spot of light rain. but temperatures dropping relative to what we've seen on thursday — even in the south, low 20s, but still pleasant enough where you've got the sunshine out. then, as we go into the weekend, our area of low pressure pushes eastwards, allowing the cold air in, and just a chance we could see some other weather systems working their way in from the west, bringing outbreaks of rain at times. this is how we see saturday at the moment — just be aware, though, it is liable to change, maybe a brighter day for scotland and northern ireland, less breezy but rather cool with sunny spells. but a bit more cloud across england and wales, and it's the north and west where we could see some rain at times brightening up again towards the south and the east. bye for now.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. i'm samantha simmonds. as the taliban take more territory in afghanistan, the militants leaders tell the bbc want they hope to achieve. poland's parliament votes to tighten control of the media — the us says its deeply troubled warning it's a threat to freedoms. italy now melts in the mediterranean heatwave — wildfires in sicily as the island registers what could be europe's hottest—ever temperature. and after skateboarding made its olympic debut, japan's13—year—old gold medallist showed our reporter what the fuss is about.