Kidney stone lands Biles in emergency room
Four-time Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles, who is scheduled to compete Saturday at the International Gymnastics Federation championships in Doha, Qatar, posted a Twitter update from Doha on Friday night saying that she required emergency room treatment for a kidney stone.
Biles, whose Twitter account is @Simone_Biles, posted the tweet, including pictures of her in an ER bed, in the 3 p.m. CT range from Doha, which is six hours ahead of Houston time. She is scheduled to compete at 10 a.m. CT/4 p.m. in Doha on Saturday.
“nothing like a late night ER visit less than 24 hours before world championships,” Biles wrote. “this kidney stone can wait…. Doing it for my team! I’ll be gucci girls.”
A spokesperson for USA Gymnastics was not immediately available to comment on Biles’ condition.
The unexpected ER visit came as Biles, 21, of Spring, was preparing to take an anticipated first step toward a potential fourth FIG allaround title.
Should Biles be unable to compete Saturday, her place would be taken by alternate Ragan Smith of Lewisville. She could still compete in the team finals next week even if she is unable to compete Saturday, but she cannot qualify for the allaround or for event finals if she is sidelined for the qualifying round.
The top eight teams from two days of qualifying will advance to the women’s team final Oct. 30, and the top 24 individual performers will qualify for the allaround final on Nov. 1.
Biles, 2017 world champion Morgan Hurd of Middletown, Del., and Riley McCusker of Brielle, N.J., are scheduled to perform on all four events during team qualifying, with the top two among that group expected to qualify for the all-around.
Grace McCallum of Isanti, Minn., will perform on vault, uneven bars and floor, and Kara Eaker of Grain Valley, Mo., will perform on balance beam. Ragan Smith of Lewisville is the alternate.
Biles won the FIG allaround title in 2013-15 before winning four Olympic gold medals and a bronze at the 2016 Olympics. She did not compete in 2017 but resumed training late last year and won the U.S. Classic allaround in July and the USA Gymnastics national championships all-around in August in Boston.
She is expected to compete a vault that has never been performed at the world level by a woman, It includes a roundoff — similar to a cartwheel — approach to the vaulting table followed by a half-turn and, after hitting the table with her hands, two full twists in the air before a blind landing facing away from the table. If she performs it at the world championships, it will be named in her honor, joining a tumbling pass on floor exercise that bears her name in the FIG code of points scoring system.
She also could add another achievement to her considerable list if she qualifies for the individual final on uneven bars. She has improved on that event since she began training last year with Laurent Landi, who coached Madison Kocian of Dallas to a silver medal on bars in 2016.
“Maybe if I could make a bar final, that would be pretty cool because I think of all the medals you can get and the finals you can participate in, I always admire the bar workers just because it’s so hard mentally and physically,” she said during a recent conference call.