Simone Biles is back at the Olympics, and …………. telling her what to do anymore See More

Biles knew to compete was to risk serious injury. She also knew not to compete was to risk her team’s medal chances. “It’s not worth getting hurt over something so silly, even though it’s so big,” she said after withdrawing from team competition and eventually the individual all-around. “It’s the Olympic Games. But at the end of the day, it’s like, we want to walk out of here, not be dragged out of here on a stretcher. So I’ve got to do what’s best for me.”

The U.S. won silver, second to the Russian Olympic Committee by 3 points, a gap Biles’ participation likely would have closed.

This time, though, no one told Biles she had better go on. In the Netflix documentary, Biles considered her decision versus the choice not given to Strug. She acknowledged that her initial reaction to Strug’s vault was like everyone else’s.

“Total badass. You go, girl,” she said. “Now, though, I think about it a little differently.”

Simone the quitter. GOATs don’t quit on teammates.

Please don’t quit on your team again this Olympics.

Are they really letting Simone Biles try out for the Olympics? What if she gets a tummy ache? Or just isn’t feeling it again?

Trolls die hard. Though Biles heads to Paris with the respect of many for calling attention to the importance of mental health, many still question the legitimacy of her struggles. The White House thought enough of Biles’ combination of success and advocacy that it awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That didn’t stop detractors.

A medal for backing out of the last Olympics, but she still went to watch and took a spot from someone else?

Maybe once it would have preyed on Biles’ insecurities, the ones fed by a culture that valued success over self and even safety. But post-Tokyo, she took a full year off from competition. She met with a therapist and considered what she wanted, not what was expected of her.

Eventually, Biles realized she still wanted gymnastics. And so, at age 27, a veritable old lady by the sport’s standards, she heads to her third Olympic Games. On her terms. By her choice.

“My ‘why’ is nobody is forcing me to do it,” she said. “I wake up every morning and choose to grind in the gym and come out to perform for myself.”

Eventually, everyone learned what had happened to Biles. But because there was no shattered ankle, no injured knee, no splint, cast or crutches, her decision left room for speculation, if not downright criticism. Some likened it to a case of the yips, failing to recognize the potentially catastrophic consequences had Biles chosen to continue. Gymnasts are expected to launch into the air and tumble, flip and twist, or swing on a bar and let go, flip, or twist before catching the bar again. Not knowing where you’re going is like asking a pilot to do a barrel roll with his eyes closed or a skydiver to land without a parachute.

Twenty-five years later, Simone Biles stood at the end of a vault runway in Tokyo. Team competition had just begun. The United States arrived as heavy favorites to repeat as gold medalists, the expectations for success based largely on Biles’ dominance. In the 2019 world championships before the Games, Biles won the all-around, vault, beam and floor, and the U.S. topped Russia by nearly 6 points. Four golds in Tokyo seemed plausible, five not even outlandish.

Like Strug, Biles sprinted down the runway and launched herself. She was meant to do an Amanar, an incredibly difficult vault that requires 2 1/2 rotations. A month earlier at the U.S. Olympic trials, she nailed it and scored a 15.466. But this time she completed only 1 1/2 twists and landed with a huge step forward. Because this was Biles, who routinely makes the impossible look easy, it became clear something wasn’t right. On the broadcast, announcers speculated about an injury as Biles convened with team doctors.

No one else knew Biles had been experiencing a sense of disorientation in practice. Gymnasts call it “the twisties,” a sort of vertigo in which they get lost in the air. After meeting with the medical staff, Biles left the competition floor, only to return in her warmups. She was done for the night, leaving her teammates to go on without her.

After the numbers were crunched, revealing the United States would have won gold without Strug’s second vault, a few people questioned the sanity of allowing a clearly injured teenager to catapult herself into the sky and plant all her weight on an already compromised and damaged joint. But their concerns were drowned out by the wave of patriotism and pride that swelled around Strug. She, herself, dismissed the claim, arguing that as an 18-year-old, she made her own decision and the skepticism took a backseat to the euphoria, anyway.

As Karolyi told the “Today” show after Strug’s vault, “Well, that particular moment, there was not consideration about how serious the injury is. As long as she was standing on her feet.”

Only much later did anyone question that wisdom.

That is how USA Gymnastics operated, the sequins and smiles masking a sport steeped in intimidation and abuse. The Larry Nassar investigation revealed gymnastics’ sinister side and prompted an uncomfortable but necessary reconciliation sportwide. Hundreds of victims came forward, forcing the ouster of coaches and administrators, the development of SafeSport and an overhaul in how the governing body conducted business. The wounds will take a long time to heal, if they ever do, and trust even longer to regain.

The Paris Games are being billed as a rebirth for gymnastics, the culmination of that long and painful process. The change, however, started even before this Olympic cycle. It began in Tokyo when Simone Biles said she couldn’t go on and no one told her she’d better go anyway.

Sports stars are our superheroes, meant to leap tall buildings without showing any sign of human frailty. Mere mortals quit. Athletes overcome; they persevere. Rub a little dirt on it and go on — that’s what it means to be exceptional.

Eventually, Biles realized she still wanted gymnastics. And so, at age 27, a veritable old lady by the sport’s standards, she heads to her third Olympic Games. On her terms. By her choice.

“My ‘why’ is nobody is forcing me to do it,” she said. “I wake up every morning and choose to grind in the gym and come out to perform for myself.”

That isn’t to say her expectations are any less. Her below (by her standards) effort on the beam at trials left her visibly — and audibly — frustrated. But she competes with lightness and joy, shifting from a game face before her routines to easy smiles after. At trials, she waved to her family, blew kisses to the crowd and hugged a 106-year-old veteran who said she was his favorite gymnast.

There is an easy trope that Biles’ return is also silencing the naysayers. She was asked about that at trials.