"Biles wore her goat necklace as another GOAT, Tom Brady, was in attendance to support her."

From "Simone Biles falls off balance beam to cost herself Olympics medal" (NY Post).

Maybe humility will make a comeback.

I've been observing the Olympics from afar. I don't even know where to find them on the mishmash of TV services I'm subscribed to, but I see the headlines. From the headlines, it seems that there are several American women who keep winning the medals, and as for the men, there's one very handsome swimmer, a gymnast whose glasses make him interesting, and a pole vaulter whose penis hit the pole crossbar.

Let's not twist again, like we did last Summer Games.

From "Simone Biles to compete in balance beam final, USA Gymnastics says" (The Guardian): 

Biles said that while previous mental blocks have primarily affected her on vault and floor routines, this time it was affecting her on all events and particularly on her twisting skills.On the balance beam, Biles normally attempts fewer twists than all other events and so she may feel most comfortable in that event. Her sole twisting skill is her high-difficulty full twisting double back dismount, which she could downgrade to a less difficult dismount if the skill remains a problem for her.

Cultural reference:

Comparing what happened to Simone Biles to a golfer getting the "yips."

I'm seeing this comparison all over the place, but I'll just quote this, which came in the email after one of the several posts I'd written about Biles. 

A reader named Leland wrote: 

Hi Althouse— great golfers often get the yips, the inability to execute the movements necessary to strike the ball—which is just sitting there, isn’t it—in a way necessary to get it in the hole. Tom Watson and Ben Hogan are examples of Greats who lost the ability to make short putts. Ian Baker Finch lost his game completely. Baseball players can get the yips, too—think of Chuck Knobloch and Steve Sax, who suddenly couldn’t control short throws to first. Simone Biles, after years of performing at the highest level, has got the yips. I give her high marks for honesty and realism in this moment. It is startling to see it happen at the Olympics when she was doing the impossible earlier this year, but this is a story familiar to anyone who follows golf or baseball.

Maybe there are some similarities. Who understands the mysteries of the connection between the mind and the body and what happens in the cases of the most accomplished and focused human beings?

But I just want to sketch out the differences:

1. Professional golfers are mature adults. Women's gymnastics is a girls' sport. Little girls are selected and trained, their body and mind are shaped to this performance. At adulthood, the body is past peak for gymnastics purposes, and the mind, still growing into maturity, has new reason to surge past the gymnastics-specific format that had been drummed into the girl since early childhood.

2. Unlike golf, gymnastics is extremely dangerous, and the mind must not interfere with the task. Unlike the "yips" in golf, a normal mind in an adult body rationally rebels against the demands of gymnastics. The yips are interesting because they happen when the thing that needs to be done is easy.

3. Professional golfers own themselves. They are independent contractors, entering tournaments in the hope of winning big money. The stakes affect the mind, and it's tough to control, and sometimes something called the "yips" intrudes. But it's the pressure, not any danger, that leads to a mind-body screwup, and the golfer has absolute confidence that it's all worth it for that money that will be his if he prevails. The worst that can happen is that he goes home with a lot less money (or no money at all). But the young gymnast is in it because adults trained and encouraged her. Their ambitions are mixed up with hers in a complex way, and they've led her down a very dangerous path. She hasn't owned herself, and she doesn't get a direct and huge payout for her performance on any given day. Yes, there is an amorphous economic reward in the future. But it's not the golfer's immediate this-for-that.

"Biles need only watch the documentary The Last Dance, which features [Michael] Jordan alone in a mansion drinking enormous glasses of alcohol and hating everybody..."

"... to understand that there is a cost to valorizing competition to the exclusion of everything else. [Tiger] Woods’s career self-imploded in a way that seemed like a direct response to the punishing mentality required to dominate every tournament — which didn’t stop the emergence of the narrative that he had to start winning again in order to redeem himself. There are surely superathletes who avoid becoming alienated head cases (Roger Federer seems like a pretty well-balanced individual). But clearly, there is a severe mental toll, oddly underexamined in our sports-obsessed culture, that comes from a life of perpetually breaking the very limits of what it means to be human, with a human’s emotions and vulnerabilities."

From "The One Limit Simone Biles Wouldn’t Break" by Ryu Spaeth (NY Magazine). 

It's one of those rare mornings when — quite by chance — a theme appears on the blog.

I've written 2 posts: 1. "The strongest case for noncitizen voting today is representation: The more voters show up to the polls, the more accurately elections reflect peoples’ desires," and 2. "'People get very wrapped up in the idea of spontaneously desiring sex,' Dr. Nagoski said, but, especially in women, it’s fairly rare." 

In the presence of this blessed convergence of the Forces of Blog, I perform the ritual of deliberately searching for more manifestations of the day's theme. You see what it is, don't you? 

"Just before the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian ever, began to discuss wrestling with depression and suicidal thoughts."

"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...."

From "Simone Biles Masters a Star’s New Move: Showing Vulnerability By withdrawing from two Olympic events, Biles joined a growing group of elite athletes who have rejected a long tradition of stoicism" (NYT). 

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.

She is the first woman in HISTORY to perform the move in competition. @OnHerTurf pic.twitter.com/j07ZweTA0f

— #TokyoOlympics (@NBCOlympics) May 23, 2021

"Simone Biles has withdrawn from the team final competition due to a medical issue."

Official statement: "Simone Biles has withdrawn from the team final competition due to a medical issue. She will be assessed daily to determine medical clearance for future competitions."

Thinking of you, Simone! pic.twitter.com/QA1GYHwWTv

— USA Gymnastics (@USAGym) July 27, 2021

ADDED: I'm reading "What Happened in Simone Biles’s Vault" (NYT):

Simone Biles balked midway through her vault in the women’s team final on Tuesday, then suddenly exited the competition.... Biles’s absence created a bigger opening for the Russians, who ultimately won the gold.

From the comments there: 

Now the reports are that Ms. Biles withdrew for mental health issues. It is sounding like the pressure affected her performance which is understandable. Heard a "Hidden Brain" feature on choking... and this description of her vault fits into what was being discussed. She began to think about her performance rather than simply do it. Hesitation and balking seem to be symptoms of using her working memory during the vault, i.e. thinking about what she was doing rather than simply letting her body do what she has done many times before.

And, a less sympathetic view: 

If Biles withdrew because of an injury, she was right to do so. If she withdrew because she didn't want to get less than first place, this is unsporting and discredits her good-sportsmanship, even if not her skill.

UPDATE: "Biles... said she pulled out of the event because she wasn’t in the right place mentally to perform the difficult and often dangerous skills she is known for, after feeling so much pressure to be successful. She had been struggling with the stress of being the greatest gymnast in history, she said, and outside expectations were just too hard to combat" (NYT).

The stress of being the greatest? Part of being the greatest is handling the stress. 

AND: The London Times quotes Biles: "I had no idea where I was in the air. I could have hurt myself and it’s very uncharacteristic. So why push it? I just felt it would be a little bit better to take a back seat and work on my mindfulness. I didn’t want to risk the team a medal for my screw-ups because they have worked too hard for that.... I think it shows power in the athlete — protecting my mental and wellbeing that I didn’t want to go out there and do something dumb and get hurt and be negligent.... If you would have said four or five years ago, that definitely wouldn’t have been that Simone — I would have gone out there and did whatever. But today it was like, you know what, I don’t want to do something stupid, get hurt. It’s not worth it, especially when you have three amazing athletes that can step up to the plate and do it. Not worth it.... There comes a time when I have to do it for myself. Coming in today was like fighting those demons. I have to do what’s right for me and not jeopardise my health and wellbeing.”

"The rescheduling of the Olympics has hit female gymnasts particularly hard, considering that their window for Olympic success is so tiny."

"Most female Olympic gymnasts are teenagers who compete in only one Summer Games before their bodies mature, adding weight and height that make it harder to twist and flip. They also start the sport so young, much younger than their male counterparts, that their bodies break down and can’t last. It has been 48 years since an Olympic gold medalist in the women’s all-around was older than 19. So it would have been significant if Biles, the face of the American team going into Tokyo, competed this summer to defend her all-around Olympic title. She is 23 and cried in her gym’s locker room when she heard news of the postponement.... 'Mentally, I don’t know if I can handle it. It’s going to be hard. I was already battling with myself mentally if I could do it this year.'"

From "‘It’s Just So Devastating’: For Crestfallen Gymnasts, an Olympic Dream Deferred/Female gymnasts often compete at younger ages than their Olympic peers and have a far more concentrated opportunity at the top. Into that intense world dropped the coronavirus pandemic" (NYT).

Here's the highest-rated comment over there:

The short of it is that gymnastics is a broken sport that probably ought to not exist. It's fine to do it for recreation, but these elite gymnasts push their bodies to the point of failure, and beyond. All so they can compete in the Olympics at the age of 17, and then have to deal with the very real physical manifestations of overtraining for the rest of their lives. It's kind [of] like traumatic brain injury in football.

Reminds me of the letter I wrote to the NYT in 1989 (published here):

Was there ever a better throwing out of the first pitch?

Okay @Simone_Biles. #Astros pic.twitter.com/YpwI3qj8TY

— patrick (@PatDStat) October 24, 2019

And the #1 quote of the year is: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters."

It's the 11th annual "Yale Book of Quotations" list, compiled by Yale Law School librarian Fred Shapiro. Here's the whole list.

I blogged the "shoot somebody" quote back in January. I said it wasn't crazy, but: "a colorful way of referring to polls that say people have definitely decided to vote for him and they're not going to change their mind. It's some comic hyperbole."

Here's the rest of the Yale list, with links to posts of mine blogging those quotes. You can see that I didn't blog them all:

2. "When they go low, we go high." — Michelle Obama, commencement speech at Jackson State University, Jackson, Mississippi, April 23.

3. "You could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the 'basket of deplorables.'" — Hillary Clinton, remarks at a fundraiser, New York, Sept. 9.

4. "And love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside." — Lin-Manuel Miranda, poem about Orlando massacre read at Tony Awards ceremony, New York, June 12. [Poem blogged here, but with different quotes.]

5. "(In politics) you need both a public and a private position." — Hillary Clinton, speech to National Multi-Housing Council released by WikiLeaks, Oct. 7.

6. "I alone can fix it." — Donald Trump, speech at Republican National Convention, Cleveland, July 21.

7. "Have you even read the United States Constitution? ... You have sacrificed nothing and no one." — Khizr Khan, addressing Donald Trump in speech at Democratic National Convention, Philadelphia, July 28.

8. "Lucifer in the flesh. ... I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life." — Former Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner, describing Ted Cruz during talk at Stanford University, April 27.

9. "His life will never be the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve. That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life." — Dan Turner, letter to judge prior to sentencing of his son, Brock Turner, after Brock's conviction for sexual assault of an unconscious woman, June [sic — it must be the date written incompletely, not the name of the unconscious woman].

10. "I'm not the next Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps. I'm the first Simone Biles." — Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, interview, Rio de Janeiro, Aug. 11.

I didn't blog #2, which is a reprise of an old Obama campaign quote, referred to as "our motto" by Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention. Who said it first? I don't know, but I've always associated it with a very similar and very different quote that came from Barack Obama in 2008: "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun." The 2 quotes can be harmonized if you think a knife is low and a gun is high.

I don't know why I didn't blog ##3, 9, and 10. They're all good quotes that would have prompted me to blog if I'd seen them at a time when I was looking for bloggables and if I'd found them before too many other people were talking about them.

I wonder how Shapiro went about deciding what to put at #1 and whether I'd have picked that rather than the competition, which I consider to be ##3 and 6. ##1 and 3 are beautifully equivalent: The candidate says something with some weird words that's outrageous and damagingly revealing. You might say, but Hillary's quote actually damaged her to death. It was perhaps the most momentous quote we've ever heard from a candidate. But you might say Trump deserved the #1 spot because he won, and that bore out the truth of his statement — bigly. In fact, I'm just noticing what's not on Shapiro's list — "... Grab them by the pussy...." Perhaps the 5th Avenue shooting stands in for the not-fit-for-the-Yale-Library "pussy" remark.

You know, I used to have a blog tradition of picking out my favorite quotes from what I'd blogged over the course of the year. I've got a Michelle Obama quote on my 2007 list: "He still didn't put the butter up... I was like, 'You're just asking for it, you know I'm giving a speech. Why don't you just put the butter up?'"

That has one from Barack Obama too: "Sen. Clinton is claiming basically the entire eight years of the Clinton presidency as her own, except for the stuff that didn't work out, in which case she says she has nothing to do with it."

And here's one from Hillary Clinton: "I wallowed in a morass of general and specific dislike and pity for most people but me especially...."

Here's my list from 2008. That was a year! Full of Barack Obama: "Because I'm an ordinary person, I thought that they meant, 'What's your biggest weakness?' If I had gone last I would have known what the game was. And then I could have said, 'Well, ya know, I like to help old ladies across the street. Sometimes they don't want to be helped. It's terrible'"/"I don't get too high when I'm high, and I don't get too low when I'm low"/"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother"/"It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation. Yes we can. It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom through the darkest of nights. Yes we can...."/"This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

Oh, good lord, that was only Part 1 of my 2008 list! That post ends with: "And this is the moment when I hit the wall. This gets us through the first half of the year. You'll have to wait for Part 2." The first half! Ha! No wonder I abandoned the tradition. The tradition was overpowering me. And then, there in the comments, the third one done is Meade, quoting my "And this is the moment when I hit the wall" and saying: "Know your limit; stay within it. Breath. Rehydrate. Have a bite of energy bar. You'll be fine. You went a little anaerobic there, that's all."

The new year came. In the first half of that year, I met Meade. In the second half, I married him. That changed some traditions around here.

ADDED: Meade reads this post and says: "You need a tag 'Meade the personal trainer.'" He restates it: "Meade the personal trainer who sometimes gets a little too personal."