Biles returns, wins bronze on balance beam
Gymnast captures seventh medal after withdrawing from other events
TOKYO >> The wait seemed interminable as Simone Biles and her coach, Cecile Landi, stood on the edge of the competition area at the Ariake Gymnastics Center Aug. 3, awaiting clearance from the judges to begin her balance beam routine on the final night of gymnastics competition.
Landi put her right arm around Biles and squeezed, trying to lighten the moment.
And then Biles was alone, turning to face the beam and a moment for which she and the world had waited a week.
Biles took a deep breath. She wasn’t alone.
Biles, seven days after she stunned these Olympics by withdrawing in the middle of the team final, returned to the Games she has been the face of, earning a bronze medal on the beam with a solid, if safe, routine, once again sticking the landing at the end of another barrier-shattering week.
China’s Guan Chenchen, competing last, won the gold medal with a 14.633 score, followed by teammate Tang Xijing (14.233) and Biles (14.00), the event’s determining factor being the American’s lastminute decision to downgrade her dismount for safety reasons.
It wasn’t the Hollywood ending her millions of fans — or NBC — might have wanted, but as Biles reminded us in Tokyo, life is complicated.
“It’s been a very long week, a very long five years,” Biles said. “I didn’t expect to medal today, I just wanted to go out and do it for me, and that’s what I did.
“Just to have another opportunity to compete at the Olympics meant the world to me.”
Biles’ spatial awareness issues, referred to by gymnasts as “the twisties,” aggravated by stress that led her to pull out of the team competition, also kept her out of the individual allaround, vault, uneven bars and floor exercise events. But even restricted to the stands, Biles continued to overshadow her sport and these Games.
Biles’ eight-year reign as the world’s premier gymnast has been defined by skills that defied the imagination. In Tokyo, she again went to a place few dare to go.
She claimed her sixth and seventh Olympic medals here, but above all Biles emerged in Tokyo as the ultimate champion in the #Metoo era; the athlete who has stood atop the Olympic medal podium four times, the top step at the World Championships, using her global platform to raise awareness for mental health issues.
“It’s great that she is speaking out about these issues,” said Sweden’s Mondo Duplantis, the world recordholder in the pole vault. “It can be tough as an athlete, and it’s good that the issues are being raised now.”
In doing so, Biles forced a national conversation on mental health.
“I think just recognizing that it’s so hard and the mental aspect is such a big thing and having the confidence to draw the line and say, ‘You know, I need to step back here and take some time for myself to center myself,’ ” U.S. beach volleyball player April Ross said. “I think that’s really empowering, and that’s something that youths should feel like they can do too, so I think what she did will really impact the future generation.”
In the days and weeks leading up to Tokyo, the weight of expectations became overwhelming. One day at practice, she said, she experienced “the biggest mental breakdown, I could not breathe.”
The stress contributed to Biles developing the twisties, the spatial awareness issue that afflicted gymnasts experience when they twist while airborne. Biles had suffered this condition before, but never on a stage this big, never with stakes this big.
“If you struggle with disorientation in the air,” Italian gymnast Vanessa Ferrari said, “it can be very scary.”
Biles said her situation worsened after the first night of team qualifying. She wasn’t at peak performance, and the U.S. ended the night second to Russia.
“That’s when the wires just snapped,” she said. “Things were not connecting, and I don’t know what went wrong. People say it’s stress related but I can’t tell you because I felt fine.”
She continued to struggle the morning of the team final.
“I kind of felt embarrassed with myself, especially when we went to the village and everybody coming up to me and saying how much I did for them and how much I meant for them,” Biles said. “I was crying in the Olympic store because I wasn’t expecting that.”
Biles was medically evaluated daily by a doctor from FIG, the sport’s international governing body, and met with Team USA sports psychologists twice a day. Because of her inability to twist safely in the air, the all-around, vault, bars and floor were out.
“It wasn’t easy pulling out of all those competitions,” she said. “People just thought it was easy, but I physically and mentally was not in the right head space. I didn’t want to jeopardize my health and my safety, because at the end of the day it’s not worth it. My mental and physical health is above all medals that I could ever win.
“For the other events, it was not safe for me to do because I could not do the skills without jeopardizing my health and safety.”
Still, she continued to train on the beam. Monday night, she was finally cleared to compete.
“Almost missed the deadline,” Biles said, referring to the time she needed to declare to compete in the beam.
“To be cleared to do beam, which I didn’t think I was going to be, just meant the world to get back out there. I wasn’t expecting to walk away with a medal. I was just going out there and doing this for me, and whatever happens, happens.”
As a concession to the twisties, she and Landi decided to downgrade the dismount, opting for an exit “I haven’t done since I was 13 or 12.”
“It sucks that I had to downgrade my dismount, but it was best for myself,” she said.
“The pressure was there, but I was doing it more for myself, and I was excited to compete at the Olympic Games, because that’s what I planned on doing coming in,” Biles continued. “To have everything change in a whirlwind was so crazy. It’s been a long week. It’s nice to end on a high.”