By Juliet Macur
With a toe-tapping Beyoncé song blasting in the arena, Simone Biles leaped up to the balance beam and wobbled, leaning over and circling her arms like windmills as if she were trying not to fall off a cliff.
A few more times in her routine, she faltered on the 4-inch-wide beam. And when she finished her routine at June’s U.S. Olympic gymnastics trials, it was clear what she thought of her effort.
Instead of just frowning or shaking her head in frustration, which would have been the norm, because the judges were watching, Biles — who ended up winning the meet — let out an expletive. Fans in the arena loudly gasped.
But Biles no longer worries about being judged, on or off the competition floor.
At 27, she is the best gymnast in history, by natural talent and also medal count, having transformed the sport with dangerously difficult routines that remain unmatched. For years, she sacrificed both mind and body for gymnastics, competing under psychological torment as a sexual assault survivor and with physical pain that made her feel as if she would need a wheelchair by the time she turned 30.
A broken rib. Bone spurs. She arrived at the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016 — where she won four gold medals and a bronze — with a nagging, yearslong foot injury that turned out to be a toe shattered in five places. A stabbing kidney stone landed her in an emergency room in Qatar during the 2018 world championships.
But Biles, the 2016 Olympic champion with a record 37 Olympic and world medals, is still picked apart, not only by the judges but by people on the internet.
More than ever, those critics took to their keyboards after Biles withdrew from most of her events at the Tokyo Games in 2021 because a mental block left her disoriented in the air. When she pulled out of the team final for fear of seriously hurting herself, she received heartening messages of support, but she was also called a quitter, a loser and un-American.
The criticism felt terribly unfair, Biles said. After all, she had made a lifetime of sacrifices for her sport. The public also knew that she was one of the hundreds of women sexually assaulted by Larry Nassar, the former national team doctor. Where was the empathy?
Since Tokyo, Biles said, she has regained control of her gymnastics and her self-confidence. After much contemplation and many weekly therapy sessions, she said she will compete beginning Sunday at the Paris Games, looking to satisfy only one judge: herself.
A Case of the Twisties
Because COVID-19 restrictions barred fans from attending the Toyko Olympics, she was halfway around the world without her family. No Nellie and Ron Biles, her mother and father, who had been to every meet in which she had ever competed. No younger sister, Adria, whose shouts of “Go, Simone!” had always resonated above the crowd.
It was just Biles and her thoughts. Thoughts about the phenomenal feats she needed to perform to make people happy. About what she represented as the sole gymnast to return to the Olympics after being abused by Nassar, now in prison.
Biles took anxiety medication and saw a therapist to deal with the trauma. But she stopped going to those counseling sessions against her mother’s advice.
Her brain had the last say. During the floor exercise of the team qualifying event, she realized in midair that she had no idea where her body was in relation to the ground. She had the twisties, an affliction like the yips in golf or baseball, where athletes suddenly forget how to sink a 2-foot putt or throw to first base.
She called her boyfriend and now husband, NFL safety Jonathan Owens.
“The question was, ‘Why is her body failing her? Why is her mind failing her? Why now?,’” Owens said last month. “She was like, ‘Wait, this is where I was going to make my graceful exit — and this is what happens?’”
Two days later, during the team final, Biles stood at the end of the vault runway, knowing that she could not complete the 2 1/2 twists that she had planned. Instead, she eked out a vault with 1 1/2 twists, stumbling forward on the landing.
She told her coach she could not go on.
Biles called her mother and said, “I can’t do it.” Nellie was shaken but tried not to show it.
Calmly, Nellie told her she did not have to continue if she did not feel safe. Remembering the conversation, she choked up.
“All she needed to hear was that it was OK,” Nellie said.
A ‘Clueless Kid’
Biles never thought she would still be competing in her late 20s. Or even her early 20s.
Months before the 2016 Rio Games, when she was 18, she told The New York Times that she could not even see herself competing at 20 because “nobody does that.” By that age, most female Olympic all-around champions were long gone from the sport.
Before Rio, before Nassar’s abuse and before the FBI’s bungling of the case plunged her into depression and anxiety, Biles was a bubbly teenager with a giggle so genuine she often couldn’t contain it. Biles says now she is jealous of that “clueless kid.”
Facing harder and harder gymnastics moves, she found ways to fight the terror she felt: She told jokes, helped other gymnasts and looked for her family in the stands.
Before stepping onto the competition floor, Biles had to know where her parents were sitting. She always exhaled with relief when she found them.
In Tokyo, empty seats looked back.
Back to the Gym
Going into the world championships last fall in Belgium, her first international meet since Tokyo, Biles still was worried that fans would shun her. But when her name was announced they went bonkers.
Biles won a record sixth world title in the all-around and she led the United States to the team gold. The world’s best gymnast was back.
“I had to prove to myself that I could still get out here, twist, I could prove all the haters wrong, that I’m not a quitter,” Biles said, explaining that she was thrilled to be there, rediscovering the joy of her sport.
As the pressure of the Olympics builds, Biles said she will rely on her family and friends to help her through the Games. They will be there this time: Sixteen family members will travel to Paris, wearing their Team Simone T-shirts.
In what could be her final Olympics, Biles is performing the best gymnastics of her life and improving each day, “like wine,” said Cécile Canqueteau-Landi, one of her coaches.
Biles acknowledged that the expectations of the Olympics and the bright lights might still cause her anxiety. But no matter what happens in Paris, she will not be alone.
Even after the announcer says that flash photography is prohibited, Nellie said, she will be in her seat with her phone’s light on, waving it back and forth so Simone can spot her.
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