It took just moments for the first barbs to fall, predictable and familiar in tone but no less harmful because of it. As soon as Simone Biles made the stunning decision to withdraw from the women’s team gymnastics final at the Tokyo Olympics on Tuesday, there was an instant outpouring of strong support and, once the picture behind her reasons came into focus, a heartwarming blanket of understanding. But that wasn’t the whole story, because it never is. Along with the sympathy, sure enough, the public and media response was interspersed with pockets of snark and scorn, mocking her exit, chastising her reasoning, discrediting her explanation. Some seemed even giddy at having seen a sports icon unable to reproduce her characteristic excellence on the biggest stage of all. The accusations and criticism leveled at Biles were unwarranted, misplaced, and unfair. The best way to handle such things, most of the time, is to ignore them. Let’s not do that today. Let’s take a listen to the malignant voices and see if there is anything there. Maybe we’ve missed something worth paying attention to. Or maybe we can dismiss the taunts for the crass nonsense they appear to be. First, let’s briefly recap what went down at the Ariake Gymnastics Centre. During the American team’s first rotation on the vault, Biles attempted an Amanar, a difficult vault with 2.5 twists, but lost control mid-air, only completed 1.5 turns and lurched forward upon landing. Biles’ score of 13.766 put the U.S. in a hole against the Russians. After consulting with her coach and a team doctor, Biles made her gut-wrenching decision. Soon after, she was in her warm-up suit, watching from the sidelines as teammates Sunisa Lee, Jordan Chiles and Grace McCallum fought their way to silver. This led to criticism No. 1. That she let her team down. Easy, low-hanging fruit, right? With Biles at her best, the Americans would have been untouchable, even though the Russia squad edged ahead of them during the qualifying rounds. But that’s the whole point, she wasn’t at her best, in a desperate spot mentally and feeling unable to perform at any kind of competitive level. “I was … not in the right headspace,” Biles said. “I am not going to lose a medal for this country and these girls because they’ve worked way too hard to have me go out there and lose a medal.” That’s not letting your team down. That’s speaking from the heart. Biles moved aside and Chiles took her position on bars and beam, while Lee stepped in on the floor. Meanwhile, there stood Biles, cheering on her teammates. Bad team player? Let’s ask Lee, now one of the favorites for individual all-around gold after Biles announced she would not compete in that event on Thursday. “Best team I could’ve asked for,” Lee wrote, on social media. OK, what else was there? Oh yes, that Biles should apologize to her teammates. Well guess what, she did. Venue cameras caught the moment when she explained her choice, while Lee, Chiles and McCallum came to terms with it. “You guys go out there and do what you’re trained to do,” Biles said. “I’m sorry, I love you guys, but you’re going to be just fine.” Does that sound like someone who doesn’t care? Biles is a sexual abuse survivor who has spoken about the long-term effects she has dealt with as it relates to her mental health. And at one of the lowest moments of her career, she chose to embolden and build up a trio of young women for whom she is a friend and a teammate, but also an idol. Critics will find fuel anywhere. Some pointed to the GOAT icon Biles has worn on her uniform, claiming it brought a level of pressure she was unable to handle. On FS1’s The Herd, Colin Cowherd provided an appropriately emphatic answer. “She’s the greatest gymnast in the history of the world,” Cowherd said. “She had a brief moment when she wasn’t in the right place. The pressure for these athletes … these are not basketball players where they’ve got a game tomorrow. You get 90 seconds on a global stage, wearing an American uniform. She had a brief moment where she said ‘I know me, I’m going to step back on this thing.’ And you want to criticize her?” How about that she let down her country? Hang on. Let’s assume, for the sake of it, Biles had magically and immediately been able to bring herself back to a solid mental footing and if she had continued the outcome would have been gold, not silver. It’s actually a sizable leap given how well the Russian team – worthy winners deserving of our applause – were performing. But let’s just say for the purpose of the discussion that the move cost the U.S. a gold medal. Even then, is it a letdown for the country? We are talking about a nation that won 46 golds at the last Olympics and is on track for a similar number here. Sure, women’s gymnastics is a marquee event, but I’m pretty sure the U.S., and American sports, will survive. If we’re talking about doing good for the country, let’s go a little deeper. By doing what she did, Biles unwittingly got an entire nation talking about mental health. How many strugglers might feel the slightest bit better today, knowing that if it’s OK for an extraordinary athlete to not be OK, it’s OK for them, too. And then, finally, nauseatingly, it was put forward that Biles wasn’t really brave and that her action was the easy way out. Come on, please. To believe that is to ignore a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Biles, in nearly a decade of elite level competition, has always had the choice of an easy way out and every time chose not to walk through those open doors and instead to try to bash down the brick walls in front of her. She’s an athlete who twists and contorts herself in the air, defying extreme velocity and impact to produce the finest routines ever seen. She’s a woman who could have quit as an all-time legend after Rio but came back for more to put her legacy on the line. She’s a survivor who carried on down her chosen path in life to chase history, despite knowing that she will forever be intertwined with horrifying memories of the abuse perpetrated by Larry Nassar, whose mere name will haunt gymnastics for eternity. She is Simone Biles, perhaps the greatest Olympian ever, who, knowing all eyes were upon her, knowing what was expected, knowing the insidious questions that would come, was still able to admit fallibility and say ‘no, I can’t do this, not right now, not today.’ Not brave? Not a chance. Here’s what others have said … Paula Davis, Forbes: “Her (Biles’) actions send a powerful message – your mental health and well-being come first, even on the world’s biggest stage.” Elle Reeve, CNN: “When Simone Biles scratched most of the Olympic team final, she said it was not because of a physical injury, but her mental health. This doesn’t mean she felt sad, or didn’t have her heart in it to compete. It means that her psychological state put her at significant physical risk. If her brain wouldn’t play along with what her body knows how to do, she could be seriously injured.” Daniella Silva, NBC: “As the greatest gymnast of all time, she (Biles) was toting expectations for athletic dominance and repeated brilliance. As an outspoken advocate for female athletes, she was lugging around the pressure to make her fans proud. Or, as she put it Monday, she was carrying ‘the weight of the world’ on her shoulders. And she was making it look easy. Until it no longer was.” |
