SHOWING COURAGE
Strength is seen in standing up for her own health
Strength to say ‘no’ lifts Simone Biles’ stature even more.
TOKYO — The pressure and challenges of being Simone Biles have been so well-documented that certainly we now know most of what there is to know about the Greatest of All Time in women’s gymnastics.
But the Tokyo Olympics have brought new insight into how even GOATs can struggle with unexpected physical or emotional vulnerabilities.
Who could imagine, for example, that Biles would be moved to write last week after pulling out of the Tokyo Olympics team final: “The outpouring (of) love and support I’ve received has made me realize I’m more than my accomplishments and gymnastics, which I never truly believed before”?
If that is the case, if Biles recognizes her true worth away from her sport as well as within, her Olympic journey is now complete.
But as the delayed 2020 Games reach their midpoint, it remains uncertain as to whether we will have a final chance this week to see Biles in full flight in Tokyo.
Although she withdrew from the team final, in which the United States won a silver medal, and dropped out of the individual all-around as well as the vault, uneven bars and floor exercise, she still could compete Tuesday in the balance beam.
Her decision to withdraw after a near-disaster of a vault showed that she was out of sync mentally and physically, fearing that she would cost the team a medal and face injury if she continued, reflects the distance that elite gymnastics has come since the days of the Bela and Martha Karolyi regimes.
Dr. Alysia Robichau, a former college gymnast at LSU who is now a sports medicine physician at Houston Methodist, said the “you can do it” ethos resulted in athletes perform
“People who are willing to comment that say that she’s weak have no clue what it’s like to be in that environment, not the talent, not the discipline.”
Dr. Alysia Robichau, former college gymnast and sports medicine physician at Houston Methodist
ing skills under stressful situations with no option to say “no” as Biles did.
“A lot of those athletes are coming out and saying they wish they had the strength that (Biles) had,” she said. “But it’s hard for non-athletes or even athletes in other sports to understand the stress of gymnastics when you’re just a little bit off.”
The best example of the compete-at-all-costs culture was Kerri Strug vaulting on an injured leg during the final rotation of the team competition at the 1996 Olympics and Dominique Moceanu competing after cracking her head on the balance beam in Atlanta.
“I was 14 (years old with) a tibial stress fracture, left alone with no cervical spine exam after this fall. I competed in the Olympic floor final minutes later,” Moceanu wrote on Twitter. “(Biles’) decision demonstrates that we have a say in our own health — a say I NEVER felt I had as an Olympian.”
Biles’ mere presence in Tokyo reflects her resilience and her stature in the Games to say no.
She beat the odds first by winning the 2013 world and national championship in her first year as an elite senior athlete and managing to stay at the top of her game for four years, an eternity in a sport that breeds sudden phenoms and precipitous declines.
Then, after a year off in 2017, she returned to the sport at the top of her game, winning two more national and world titles and arriving in Tokyo favored to become the first woman to win back-to-back Olympic all-around titles since Vera Caslavska of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and 1972.
She was unbeaten for eight years, a record for the modern era of women’s gymnastics, and only twice during that time was outscored for a single night of allaround performances.
But the odds, the “twisties” and the grinding pressure of being the face of her troubled federation, still reeling from the Larry Nassar sexual abuse scandal, conspired against her.
Dangers of the twisties
For Biles to return to competition she must cope with a condition known as the twisties, the disquieting feeling suffered by gymnasts and divers when they lose their sense of where they are in air as they tumble, twist and plummet 30 feet toward the water or, in Biles’ case, 10 feet toward the floor.
Moceanu came up with arguably the best description of gymnastics’ demands and perils for those who equate what Biles is experiencing with a golfer’s yips or a second baseman’s inability to throw to first base.
“In our sport, we essentially dive into a pool w/no water,” Moceanu wrote. “When you lose your ability to find the ground, which appears to be part of (Biles’ condition), the consequences can be catastrophic.”
Robichau, who at age 8 attended a training camp at the Karolyi Ranch, the former women’s national training center for USA Gymnastics, knows of the twisties, and she has had to explain the phenomenon to her skeptical husband, a former college baseball player.
“He said, ‘It’s not that big of a deal. They’re always under pressure. Shouldn’t they be used to this? Can’t they shake it off and move on?’” Robichau said.
“I told him that it’s not like missing a putt or missing a basket. It’s worrying about your life. If you don’t know where you’re going to land, you won’t land safely. You could have a brain injury, a broken leg, a neck injury that leaves you paralyzed.”
Robichau said gymnasts use the term “lost” to describe what Biles experienced in her opening vault of the team competition.
“You can see her head kind of go in one direction, and her body isn’t really connected. Any gymnast would see that and say, ‘My gosh, she’s lost,’” she said.
“The twisties are kind of a sensation that you get when your head and your body have no idea how to connect themselves nor find their place in space and awareness. You might not know up from down, you might not know left from right. You might not know where to stop flipping or twisting.
“It’s a very uncomfortable feeling, like that feeling of vertigo when everything is spinning and you don’t know how to make it stop.”
Twisties, she said, can be physical or mental or just plain bad luck.
“But when a gymnast is off, it’s not like missing a putt or missing a basket,” she said. “If you don’t know where you are, if you miss an inch and a half on beam or three inches on vault, it can be life-threatening. It’s scary.”
Twisties also can result from improper form, which would be critical to such a finely tuned athlete as Biles. Accordingly, recovery could be as simple as a few repetitions in the practice gym or as complex as giving up a skill or taking weeks to regain proper form.
“I’ve had some colleagues who couldn’t do a simple bar routine or tumbling pass,” Robichau said. “They may have gotten lost on a triple somersault and then they can’t do a basic layout.”
Standing up to expectations
Biles’ issues were complicated by the pressure of the Olympics, where she was viewed as, in the words of U.S. teammate Sam Mikulak, “a medal factory.”
“You go on Twitter and everyone’s like, ‘Oh, I’m really expecting this. I want this from this person’ and ‘Simone is going to be the medal factory of the world,’” Mikulak said in a radio interview last week.
“When you get these conversations, all this hype and everyone starts talking about it, it gets in your head a lot and it starts changing you to what other people want you to be rather than you being able to stand up for yourself and be who you want to be.”
With Biles among the faces of the Olympics, the conversation about mental health has grown.
“It’s not taboo anymore,” golfer Rory McIlroy told the Associated Press. “People can talk about it just as (if ) somebody has a knee or elbow injury. If you don’t feel right, 100% right mentally, that’s an injury too.”
The notion of “powering through it” persists, he acknowledges. But McIlroy says hearing from people like Biles and swimmer Michael Phelps about mental health makes an impact — a positive one.
“When you hear the most decorated Olympian ever talk about his struggles and then probably the greatest gymnast ever talk about her struggles, then it encourages more people that have felt that way to come out and share how they felt.”
Working in Biles’ favor, if she chooses to compete this week, is her strong fundamental skills honed by former coach Aimee Boorman and current coaches Laurent and Cecile Landi.
“Her motivation has been to be the best version of herself,” Laurent Landi said in an earlier interview. “That’s why she came back, to prove to herself that she can still do it.
“When people watch her, they think it’s easy. It’s not easy. There is a lot of work behind it.”
Now, at least, perhaps viewers know it’s not as easy as Biles has made it appear the last eight years.
Robichau is part of an online group of about 80,000 mothers with children in gymnastics, and she said members have been thrilled to hear Biles describe that it’s OK not to be OK.
“Having the courage as a gymnast, having the courage as a female to say, ‘I don’t feel right about this’ is extremely amazing,” she said. “It’s an accomplishment all by itself to be able to do under the pressure of guilt of saying ‘no.’”
She acknowledged that Biles will now have more than her share of detractors. However, people who know of what they speak — athletes, doctors and coaches — will think differently, she said.
“People who are willing to comment that say that she’s weak have no clue what it’s like to be in that environment, not the talent, not the discipline,” Robichau said. “There will be people who say she’s not worth watching anymore, and there will be millions more who stay with her.”
While Biles decides whether to compete once more, Robichau has an answer for the question of how Biles may have come to realize her full impact on those who admire her.
“I think it hit her that standing up to say no, standing up to do something bigger than gymnastics, made her realize her potential — standing up for the weak, for those who have anxiety and depression, for the gymnast who was never allowed to say ‘no.’
“I think it’s exciting to think of her potential, and I believe she will be more than a gymnast.”