It was a dramatic way to begin and end the gymnastics competition at the Tokyo Summer Olympic Games. In the very first event, the team competition, Simone Biles abruptly withdrew after completing only one vault, citing the toll on her mental health that the stress and pressures of competing at her second Olympics have taken.
Then, on the last day of gymnastics contests, Biles made a dramatic return, after scratching from the other events — the all-around and the event finals on vault, floor and uneven bars, all of which she qualified for — throughout the week.
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More media were in attendance than at any other gymnastics event at the Ariake Gymnastics Center all week, all for the chance to see Biles in action. When Biles took to the beam, the crowd, as it were, went silent save for the soft background music in the building, only erupting in cheers toward the end of her routine with each completed skill. She didn’t end with the spectacular dismount that’s named after her — a double twisting double flip — that she’s been training and perfecting over the last five years, choosing instead to do a double pike, but it was enough for bronze.
What matters more for Biles than the score or her placement was that she was competing at all. When she pulled out of the team competition on July 27, Biles said “once I came out here — no, the mental was not there; I need to let the girls do it and focus on myself.” She said she’d been shaky all day prior to that competition, and couldn’t shrug off the nerves and anxiety like she normally does. The following day, Biles also pulled out of the all-around competition and then withdrew from the event finals in vault, uneven bars and floor.
Another factor contributing to her unexpected decision — she shared on her social media that she is experiencing the twisties, a condition in which gymnasts inexplicably lose their bearings while tumbling in the air and can’t control how much they twist or how they will land. “Literally can not tell up from down. It’s the craziest feeling ever. not having an inch of control over your body. what’s even scarier is since I have no idea where I am in the air I also have NO idea how I’m going to land. or what I’m going to land on head/hands/feet/back…” Biles posted on her Instagram stories.
Read more: Simone Biles and Why We All Get the ‘Twisties’ (Even If We Can’t Fly)
Stress and the twisties form a tangled web of causation and contribution. Stress could contribute to the disorientation and balance anomalies of the twisties, or the twisties can descend out of the blue, and themselves spark anxiety and stress if gymnasts aren’t able to “feel” themselves in the air again for days, weeks or months. For Biles, who performs some of the most challenging skills on floor and vault, the twisties can be extremely hazardous if she loses her bearings in the air and lands incorrectly.
Sometimes the twisties resolve themselves as quickly as they appear; sometimes they take days or weeks to get better, and in some cases gymnasts never completely regain their equilibrium after experiencing them. “It’s different for every gymnast,” Jordyn Wieber, a member of the 2012 Olympic gold medal-winning women’s gymnastics team, and now head coach of women’s gymnastics at University of Arkansas. “It depends on the athlete and the skills they are doing.” Getting over the twisties involves going back to the basics and reteaching the body how to twist, mostly by building up to practicing twisting skills but on softer surfaces, or landing in foam pits so gymnasts to prevent injury. But such facilities aren’t available at Olympic training sites, so Biles has been working at a gym in Tokyo so she can land on soft mats when she loses herself in the air and doesn’t land on her feet.
Despite the challenges, beam holds special resonance for Biles, and since the beam final was scheduled as the last women’s gymnastics event in Tokyo, it seemed destined that, as Biles told teammate MyKayla Skinner, “beam is the one,” meaning the only event she felt she could compete in Tokyo. At her first Olympics in Rio in 2016, Biles’ beam routine in the event final was the only imperfect one in her otherwise relatively flawless performance at those Games; she wobbled and nearly fell off. “I specifically want to come back to do a better job on beam,” she told TIME before she left for Tokyo.
And she did just that. Biles was solid throughout the routine, punctuating each skill with the confident thump of a solid landing on the beam. While she scaled back the dismount from the one that she performed at the recent U.S. national championships and Olympic Trials, she still performed a routine with a 6.1 start value, just under her normal one of 6.5.
It wasn’t exactly the performance that Biles likely had in mind as she was preparing for Tokyo last year, nor the one that she hoped would redeem her Rio routine. But given the week that Biles has had, it brought back the characteristic smile on her face that was missing on that first day of competition.
As soon as she was finished, Biles shifted from competitor to the ultimate cheerleader to support teammate Sunisa Lee, who immediately followed. It’s a role Biles has come to embrace over the past week; she has been the loudest and most energetic supporter of teammates Lee, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey and MyKayla Skinner as they continued in the Olympic competition without her.
Lee finished fifth in the beam final, with her shakiest performance all week, and barely held her balance after her side aerial combination. With a big hop to the side on her dismount, she earned 13.866 points and was off the podium.
Read more: Sunisa Lee’s Incredible Journey to a Historic Olympic Gymnastics All-Around Gold Medal
Still, Lee’s performance in Tokyo was the pleasant surprise of the gymnastics events; she admitted that because of Biles’ dominance in the sport, coming into these Olympics, she and the rest of the gymnasts were competing for second. When Biles withdrew, gold was suddenly a possibility. Lee seized the moment and earned gold in the all-around, then captured bronze in the uneven bars final to add to her silver from the team event.
Despite the disappointing unexpected way her second Olympics turned out, Biles proved that she is more than her gymnastics, and more than a gymnast. At every Olympics, there is a lot of talk about greatness—greatness defined by athletic feats that test the limits of human ability, greatness defined by the strength of the human spirit to overcome adversity. But Biles forged a new way of thinking about greatness in elite athletes—one that doesn’t revolve so much around medals or accomplishments, but around the strength of character to admit weakness, and to take the path that’s less trodden and less predictable.
By withdrawing so suddenly from the team competition, Biles opened herself up to inevitable criticism for being selfish, and for putting herself above her teammates. Biles was unapologetic about her decision. “You have to put mental health first,” she said after the team competition, “Because if you don’t, and you’re not going to enjoy your sport or succeed as much as you want to. It’s okay to sometimes sit out the big competitions to focus on yourSelf and that shows how strong a competitors and person you really are, rather than just battling through it.”
U.S. swimmer Caeleb Dresssel, who also bore the weight of an entire nation’s expectations on his shoulders in the pool as a five-time gold medalist, admitted on NBC that the pressure “does pile up…I don’t know what is considered too much…I’ve had a couple of breakdowns.” But he stressed that every athlete responds to that pressure differently, and that no one should be judging athletes when they make decisions that they believe are right for them. “No one else’s opinion matters, because they’re not the one in her situation.”
Biles’ words, and more importantly her actions in Tokyo, could become a rallying cry for athletes who have wanted to raise awareness and attention about mental health, but have faced too much stigma and cultural and institutional inertia to make much of a difference. Like Naomi Osaka’s decision to opt out of press conferences, and ultimately the French Open earlier this year in an effort to protect her mental well being, Biles’ bold decision, as controversial as it was, will serve as an example of a prominent athlete putting mental health above medals, and peace of mind before persevering against all odds. As much as she has been a pioneer in her sport, pushing the limits of what gymnasts can do, in Tokyo Biles is embarking on new ground redefining what is expected of athletes and when too much is enough. Athletes are speaking up, loud and clear. Hopefully the rest of the world will start listening.
Read more about the Tokyo Olympics:
- Naomi Osaka: ‘It’s O.K. to Not Be O.K.’
- Motherhood Could Have Cost Olympian Allyson Felix. She Wouldn’t Let It
- Simone Biles’ Olympic Team Final Withdrawal Could Help Athletes Put Their Mental Health First
- ‘Unapologetic and Unafraid.’ Sue Bird Stares Down Olympic Glory in Tokyo and Equity Off the Court
- Meet 6 Heroes Who Helped Battle COVID-19 Before Competing in the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics
- Here’s How Many Medals Every Country Has Won at the Tokyo Summer Olympics So Far
- 48 Athletes to Watch at the Tokyo Olympics
- The Olympic Refugee Team Was Created to Offer Hope. Some Athletes Are Running Away From It
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