Grace under pressure
There’s a lot to dislike about the Olympics — including the endemic corruption of the site-selection process, and the decrepit afterlives of many of the expensive venues constructed by excessively optimistic host nations. But the games also provide us with narratives of struggle and endurance that no amount of nationalism and commodification can tarnish. There were a number of those in the pendemic-battered Tokyo games that conclude today. But the one that will likely be most remembered will be the story of champion gymnast Simone Biles.
Biles, of course, is to gymnastics what Michael Jordan and LeBron James are to basketball, only more so. At 24, she is the most decorated American gymnast in history. She has overcome, among other things, a hardscrabble childhood and sexual assault by Larry Nassar, the physician who used his role in USA Gymnastics and other organizations to prey on young women.
In Tokyo, Biles dropped out of several events after suffering what is known as “the twisties,” a loss of one’s sense of body position in the air — which is where Biles spends a lot of her time in competition. Trying a complex move in that condition can cost an athlete a lot more than a perfect score, up to and including a catastrophic, career-ending, perhaps even life-altering injury.
THE ISSUE:
THE STAKES:
Her decision drew predictible ire from the right-wing pundit class, where the only bad opinions are those that fail to generate social-media attention. Biles’ decision “was incredibly selfcentered and selfish,” according to Tim Constantine in the Washington Times, who proceeded to list the corporate sponsors Biles had allegedly let down — as if Nabisco and Uber Eats were owed a performance no matter the level of potential peril to the athlete. (Those sponsors and several others issued statements of wholehearted support for her decision.)
Upstate radio host Bob Lonsberry made Constantine seen almost restrained with a column that went for the gold in bad taste: Not quitting, he wrote, was “how the people on the deck of the Mayflower survived. That’s how the people in the belly of the slave ships survived.” Someone should tell Lonsberry that enslaved people didn’t have the option of quitting anything — it was, indeed, a defining feature of chattel slavery. (And it might also be worth pointing out that it was the South’s refusal to quit enslaving Black people that led to the Civil War.)
Let’s be real: Biles isn’t storming Omaha Beach on D -Day or building the Hoover Dam with her own bare hands. She’s an exquisite performer with hardwon discipline and self-awareness. If she recognizes a serious flaw in her mental game on a given day, it’s no different from acknowledging that a joint or ligament is on the verge of strain or breakdown.
Accepting reality and adjusting to changing circumstances aren’t specifically American virtues, of course, but perhaps they are ones we would benefit from seeing in practice more often. By properly taking agency over her Olympic performance, Biles made it clear that her mental and physical soundness was more important that any single competition.
Like many high-pressure fields, the world of elite athletic competition is littered with winners who burned out on or off the field (or both). Biles, who returned to competition in Tokyo to win bronze in the balance beam, sent a valuable message to anyone buckling under a psychological burden: It’s all right to set it down until you’re strong again.