The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Osaka, Biles and the enduring sports message of 2021
First, there was young, four-time Grand Slam champion Naomi Osaka, who in May announced on Twitter that she was withdrawing from the French Open and stepping away from the court. Depression, she said, was the reason.
Then came Simone Biles. The world’s greatest gymnast pulled herself out of several events at the Tokyo Olympics in July. Suddenly, she said, she was shaken with fear of doing what she had done so flawlessly countless times before — leaping into the air and twisting her body heels overhead before landing on her feet. “I don’t think you realize how dangerous this is,” Biles explained then on Instagram. “... Nor do I have to explain why I put my health first.
“Physical health,” she wrote, “is mental health.” Yes, it is.
And maybe nothing has reminded us more of that than having lived and watched yet another year of this dreadful pandemic. As further proof, the Government Accountability Office just sent to Congress an 85-page report that warned “the pandemic is potentially driving another national crisis related to its effects on behavioral health, with people experiencing new or exacerbated behavioral health symptoms or conditions.”
All of which is why there were no more important people in sports this year than Osaka and Biles. At a time when so many among us are struggling with darkness, loneliness and sorrow in this public health catastrophe,
Osaka and Biles no matter how vulnerable on a world stage - showed us we shouldn’t feel ashamed if we don’t feel OK, that it is OK to take time off, if you can, and seek help from those trained to provide it.
Osaka and Biles are my 2021 sportspersons of the year.
I’m not much for these awards, which Sports Illustrated commenced in its first year publishing in 1954. It awarded Roger Bannister for running the first sub-four-minute mile. The magazine was mimicking the annual year-wrapup issue from its thenparent company, Time, which began a man of the year award in 1927 - women didn’t count until 1936 with Charles Lindbergh on its cover for piloting a plane across the Atlantic.
But I did come to applaud SI’s choices the past few years for they represented how sport transcended its fields and arenas of play. In 2020, it cited five athletes, including Osaka, for their social activism, which we have come to celebrate in sports since quarterback Colin Kaepernick protested in 2016 and should have been so honored. In 2019, it recognized Megan Rapinoe as much for her leadership of the U.S. women’s national soccer team as for the backbone she mustered to support Kaepernick by kneeling and to demand women players get equal pay. (It shouldn’t be forgotten that the latter fight was waged earlier by former goalkeeper Hope Solo.)
And in 2018, SI named the entire NBA championship Golden State team its athletes of the year, in part because the players “... coincided with the restoration of the NBA as a leading edge of culture that recalls the league’s prolonged boom, which began with the Magic-Larry years in the 1980s and continued through the Jordan-dominated ‘90s. The current boom, too, has coincided with the increasing intersection of sports and the hard questions of politics, race and identity, among others, that have so divided the country. The Warriors forcefully but civilly - embraced the unique platform afforded them.”
But this month, SI named Tom Brady its 2021 sportsperson of the year after he left New England following a legendary generational run of success and, despite being 40something with a new team, led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to a Super Bowl crown.
It struck me as if SI wanted to stick the toothpaste back in the tube. Get back to sport for sport rather than continue to recognize this particularly transcendent moment we are in.
Osaka and Biles weren’t the first star athletes to bare their mental health needs to the world. But they altered how we have come to understand the trite phrase “mental toughness.” It doesn’t have to mean playing through physical pain or sucking it up. It doesn’t have to mean coming from behind to win when losing seemed certain. It doesn’t have to mean rehabbing some terrible injury and returning to competition.
It can mean owning up to doubts or concerns that prevent you from performing and taking the time to find your balance again. It can mean erasing whatever stigma was attached to a mental struggle, no matter how long or brief.
More and more athletes whom we revere for toughness are demonstrating there is nothing wrong with having such struggles. Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Calvin Ridley announced a few weeks ago that he was pulling himself from the field not to heal a strained hamstring or twisted ankle but to manage his mental health. Eagles tackle Lane Johnson took a similar break to deal with anxiety and depression.
The reaction to such revelations has been like none we have previously witnessed and has come at a time when we - this country and this world - need the message the most. And there is evidence the pleas of these athletes to recognize the importance of mental health are being heeded.
The journal Nature published a report that showed a large spike in calls to mental health hotlines around the world during the first wave of the pandemic, suggesting people became more comfortable reaching out for help with uncomfortableness. The American Psychological Association found the same in the United States during what it called a “mental health tsunami.”
Mental health apps such as Calm and Headspace realized a boon in users in the wake of the admissions from Osaka and Biles in particular. Yes, there is profit in treating mental health, too. Calm also volunteered to pay any fines Osaka incurred for refusing to meet the tennis media, which tennis officials warned would be the penalty if she opted out of mandatory news conferences. She once broke down in tears during a news conference and said she was uncomfortable answering reporters’ questions.
I remember covering quiet-spoken running back Ricky Williams when he wouldn’t take off his helmet with a dark visor, through which it was difficult to see his eyes. It wasn’t until years later we learned he suffered a sort of stage fright.
Osaka has become the highest-paid woman athlete in the world. You can buy her signature salad at Sweetgreen and her signature shoes from Nike. All of which makes her admission more remarkable.
But what is most important to recognize about Osaka — and Biles, too — is that no matter her station or success, not feeling OK is, in fact, OK. That’s a life lesson from sports in 2021.