"Since then, the N.B.A. players DeMar DeRozan and Kevin Love and the figure skater Gracie Gold, among other athletes, have gone public to say they grapple with anxiety and depression. Though sports psychologists say a stigma persists about athletes and mental health, and Biles was surely disappointed not to have lived up to enormous Olympic expectations, she was also widely embraced as the latest active, elite athlete who had the courage to acknowledge her vulnerability.... It was not unlike the tennis star Naomi Osaka’s withdrawal from this year’s French Open rather than face what she considered invasive and dispiriting questioning from the news media...."
A new narrative forms around Biles. Will she become a mental health celebrity like Prince Harry and Monica Lewinsky? What grandiose media plans are whirling in Oprah Winfrey's head right now?
The NYT article links to this from May 24th: "Simone Biles Dials Up the Difficulty, ‘Because I Can’/The Olympic gold medalist’s new vault is so dangerous that gymnastics, for now, limits the scoring rewards for trying it. Biles says that’s unfair" (NYT).
That piece muses that the authorities set a low score on the risky vault because "Biles is so good that she might run away with any competition she enters simply by doing a handful of moves that her rivals cannot, or dare not, attempt." Now, we've seen, Biles herself dares not attempt it.
This was the occasion for the article that came out in May:
.@Simone_Biles successfully completed a Yurchenko double pike in vault at last night's #USClassic.
— #TokyoOlympics (@NBCOlympics) May 23, 2021
She is the first woman in HISTORY to perform the move in competition. @OnHerTurf pic.twitter.com/j07ZweTA0f
Posts
14 comments:
Lloyd writes:
"The U.S. networks are famous for going over the top with emotional background stories on athletes. A parent or sibling who died of cancer: how do they do it? How do they keep on going, and then compete at the highest level?
"This story seems different. In how many sports is it true that if you slip for a split second, maybe mentally ("losing your orientation in space" or something) you can suffer brain damage or permanent disability? When I googled I found an Aussie surfer who just won bronze after suffering brain damage while surfing in 2015. One thinks of football, hockey (skates and sticks, high speed), and then sports that involve powerful engines.
"Somehow female gymnastics keeps coming up with a special kind of crazy. Bela Karolyi flourished as a coach under Communism, where it was possible to start with thousands of girls, and then winnow them down to the few "winners." The "losers" often suffered a loss of normal childhood, family time, even school. Karolyi really innovated with the idea of working with extremely young girls; something about puberty making it more difficult to be graceful, all you have to do is build up their muscles and work them very hard. Was this ever a good idea? Of course Karolyi moved to the U.S. and became the go-to coach that every parent wanted their girl to benefit from. More recently, the extremely creepy story of Dr. Nassar performing digital rape on who knows how many girls and young women. The FBI for some reason turning a blind eye; why? It surely couldn't have been Trump hatred in this case.
"Simone has reached her mid-20s, she is a Nassar victim, and she has been through a lot."
Stan writes:
"I love that people who have never vaulted in their lives, who couldn’t walk a straight line on a six-inch balance beam, who would miss the higher uneven parallel bar on the first try—who’ve never had to practice hours a day, every day, for MOST OF THEIR LIVES, can sit on their sofas and think that all Simone had to do was “suck it up” and perform. To be labeled by pundits and commentators (and some second-rate, aging gymnasts) as the “Greatest of All Time” and then HAVE TO LIVE UP TO IT IN EVERY SINGLE COMPETITION, well, there’s absolutely NO PRESSURE, is there?
"I’m reminded of the “human interest” feature (the ones that TV coverage always trots out to give the audience a “feel” for the “just like you and me” athletes) some years ago that showed the father of wrestler Dan Gable (also considered one of the “Greatest of All Time”) showing the cameraman around the room dedicated to Dan’s trophies: wall to wall, floor to ceiling. The loving, supportive father was shown saying “If Dan doesn’t come home with the Gold, all this will mean nothing.”
"And I remember thinking, what a terrible, disgusting man! ONE trophy is enough to be proud of! And what does that do to a child, teen, young adult? If you fail to acquire a gold medal, you’re washed up, a failure, not worth anything? No wonder Simone pulled out. I have the utmost respect for someone who has the courage to disappoint the fans while saving herself."
Temujin writes:
"Been traveling all day so I missed all the action around the world. And it was nice. But...one thing I've noticed is the room to be a hero that Simone Biles is being given. She's being portrayed as having done an heroic thing. For the team. For her own better self.
"All of this is probably true. But I have memories of the Chicago Bulls Scottie Pippen backing out of key games against the Bad Boy Detroit Pistons a couple of times in championship games. He had serious migraines. It was thought he was just tired of getting beat up by Pistons players. He caught years of grief about that. There have been other players in professional team sports who have also had to do this, and received torrents of bad wishes.
"My thought was that it's different for men. Different for male professional athletes, than it is for today's female athlete. I think Simone Biles is a champion and one of the world's greatest athletes. Not a question in my mind about that. But, the treatment she is getting is noticeably different than what I've seen in previous situations.
"Maybe we're getting more evolved as humans. Nah. Just kidding. "
JPS writes:
"If you've seen the movie "Million Dollar Baby", with Clint Eastwood and Hillary Swank, you'll understand her concern about sports injuries: sometimes devastating and permanent."
Alex writes:
"Every great athlete reaches a point where they realize that they can’t go on because if they do they’ll either humiliate themselves or, worse, seriously injure themselves. Some choose to walk away, others stay with varying levels of success. Being a top level athlete has to be a lot like just-in-time logistics: you’re squeezing every ounce of efficiency you can by running up a lot of fragility. Ms. Biles apparently has moves in her routine that no one else can do due to the sheer physical capabilities required. She’s operating on a razor-thin margin where any screw up could mean serious injury. Add that she’s probably never had the time to address what happened to her, but instead has been driven, by herself and by others, to focus on gymnastics, and it was basically a race to see if she could peak at just the right moment for another gold, or if those demons would catch up first. I’m not going to say that she’s a hero for walking away, but I will say that it makes her human."
Nathan writes:
"I have purposely refused to follow the assigned narratives in these Olympic games, even the Biles Hero Narrative du jour. I'm the biggest Track fan I know and I have to be vigilant to not be drawn into the manufactured victim/hero narratives as I'm scouring for track news. I don't know what is right or wrong about any of this as I have not read many details, but what I am certain of is that she absolutely will win the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the next ESPYs. They love this stuff and we should too if we want to be virtuous like them."
Birches writes:
"I guess I'm going to be the contrarian here. No one forced Simone Biles to compete again at 24. No one forced her to advertise that her training gym was superior and gave superior results. No one forced her to take a bunch of endorsement money this year for the Olympics. No one forced her to put a GOAT on her leotard.
"She (and her handlers) decided to do that. She could have retired and no one would have thought ill of her. She wanted to be the best of all time. That meant coming back and inviting the hype. She failed. I don't think it's inhumane to point that out."
Aggie writes:
"Unfortunately Biles has decided to withdraw from her team activities in an era when other athletes routinely capitalize on their standing to emphasize non-athletic, personal grievances – or rather, to highlight chosen grievances in a way that elevates them, personally. In this very Olympics, the women’s soccer team captain Rapinoe comes to mind in particular, with her long history of histrionics over pay and coverage, and goose eggs to their credit in competition. Everybody knows the high risk of serious injury and the high degree of focus that is required to compete at top levels in any modern sport. Just as everybody knows that ‘pushing through’ and showing grit is part and parcel of athletic triumph.
"But with this timing, Biles is just going to have to put up with having her motives questioned. For whatever reason, her actions have cost the team, maybe a Gold medal, and she will be forever second-guessed for waiting until this moment to bow out. Only she will know whether she did the right thing."
Tim writes:
"My twitter feed is full of admiration for Simone Biles, pleas for better mental health treatment, understanding of the pressure placed on elite athletes. I have to laugh at that last part. Pressure?
"Pressure is seeing the barbarian army at the gates of your city, there to burn your home to the ground, kill the men, rape the women, and sell the children into slavery. And you go about your work anyway because that’s what your society needs you to do. Pressure is being broke and unemployed when the rent is due and your children are hungry. That’s what pressure looks like.
"Pressure does not look like, to paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, being expected to do something that is of no use to anyone more competently than anybody else. That is what people who have no experience with pressure think pressure looks like."
Michelle writes:
"So what was this "Yurchenko double pike" before Biles? I read that "a handful" of men have done this in competition, but that Biles is the only woman to use it so far. Why have we heard nothing about the men? I have seen Kristian Thomas's landing of one, but that is the only information easily available. She, as the first woman to use it, is showered with praise, whereas I can't even discover whether Thomas was the first man to use it, never mind who the other members of the "handful" are.
That's gymnastics, though: To the general public, the word means *women's gymnastics*, and the almost entirely different male sport might as well not exist. Even when men are doing the super-difficult moves women do, and earlier, and in greater quantity."
Thomas writes:
"I'm not going to be too critical of Simone Biles. but neither do I think she should be put on a pedestal.
"That being said, of two points I am certain.
"First, she is sucking all of the air out of the room. She is being given many times the media coverage for NOT participating with her team
than any other athlete who did participate. That is unfortunate.
"Two, I hope she is comfortable with her decision because this event, not her medals, will define her legacy. That is unfortunate too."
Irving writes:
"The media and Biles can spin it however they want, but her excuse is utter bullshit. She claims she got the “twisties”? Really? Again, bullshit. Kinesthetic awareness and muscle-memory do not just suddenly go away and I have never met an elite gymnast or coach who claimed that either one had happened to them or to anyone else they knew. Is gymnastics risky? Absolutely. That’s the fun of it. Hell, gymnastic broke my neck at the University of Minnesota. I didn’t quit. And if a kid of mine did, she’d never be allowed back in the gym. All of the elite gymnasts that I have worked with were major risk-takers and super-competitive outside of the sport. Gymnastics is just one of many outlets for them."
Iain writes:
"At one of our local high school sports banquets, each team offers up one member who has to answer spontaneously, for the audience of families and fellow athletes, a previously unheard personal question posed by his coach. A decade ago, my son's question was "how has being a trumpet player made you a better swimmer, and how has being a swimmer made you a better trumpet player?"
"After a semi-obligatory joke about lung capacity, his answer was that these are both things for which you practice relentlessly, and that when you get up on the block or stand for your recital, you have to trust that your practice has put you where you need to be, and that you will perform. You can't think about it: you just have to have faith in your training, and you just have to do what your training has prepared you to do.
"Just so. He didn't say it, but the obvious corollary is that if you lose that confidence, that faith, you will not be able to do it. I don't think it's a mark of shame to lose the confidence; I see it more as a mark of humanity. But performance at high levels requires that faith. It's not blind faith; it's earned faith. You earn it with your training, with your discipline, with your focus. But it's a tenuous thing, and losing it has real consequences, whatever the scale or level at which you compete.
"I don't think Biles is a heroine (see how old fashioned I am?). But I do think she's human. Not a bad thing to be, IMHO."
Biles did embrace the idea of herself as the "greatest of all time," so that's causing some of the criticism of her. It's one thing to withdraw, another to withdraw and still be the "greatest of all time." What about all the other women?
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