Simone Biles spent the last three years go ahead THE Tokyo Olympics.
The gymnastics superstar understands that’s not the case for everyone.
Never mind how many national titles she wins Or how many times she has stood on the top step of the podium at the world championshipsBiles knows she remains frozen in time for critics who won’t or can’t forgive her for withdrawing from multiple finals at the 2020 Games to protect herself.
The proof is in her mentions, the ones she says she tries to ignore but still comes across.
The 27-year-old wants to set the record straight as she prepares for a third trip to the Olympics: redemption she’s looking for later this month has nothing to do with silencing those who will log on just to see if ” the turns “ resurface. Especially because she knows it’s no use.
“They’re always like, ‘Oh my God, are you going to quit again? Or are you going to quit again?’ And then, ‘If I did it, what are you going to do about it? Tweet me again?’” Biles said after winning the Olympic qualifier last month. “Like I’ve already had to deal with this for three years. But yeah, they want us to fail.”
Life happens
The woman who will take the field with the rest of Team USA in qualifying on July 28 is not the one who has left Japan at the center of sometimes uncomfortable conversations about mental health.
She has evolved, both personally and professionally, engaging in therapy — even while competing — and ensuring her sport no longer defines her, while perhaps looking as good as ever, more than a decade after the first of her six records. World All-Around Titles.
Biles married current Chicago Bears safety Jonathan Owens in the spring of 2023, and her busy personal schedule is filled with the usual 20-something milestones: from baby showers to weddings to overseeing the details of the home she and her husband are building in suburban Houston.
When one of her former Olympic teammates welcomed her first child late last year, Biles admitted she felt a pang in her heart: “This is what she should do.”
But she doesn’t. Not yet, anyway. Two decades after taking up the sport, Biles still finds herself at the World Champions Center, the Biles family-owned gym in Spring, Texas, countless hours a week. She still does flips. She still “tests her life every day” while dispelling the myth that elite gymnasts peak in their late teens.
For what?
“I think with everything I’ve been through, I want to push myself, I want to see how far I can go,” she said. “I want to see what I’m still capable of so that when I walk away from this sport, I can be really happy with my career and say I gave it my all.”
Mentor and friend
Even as her definition of “everything” is changing, the teenage prodigy has emerged as a seasoned stateswoman who knows how to be comfortable leading.
When a good friend and 2020 Olympic champion Sunisa Lee tripping and falling on vault at the U.S. Championships in June — a scene eerily similar to the sequence that led to Biles withdrawing from the team final in Tokyo — Biles ran to offer her support.
At the 2023 world championships, Joscelyn Roberson suffered an ankle injury that forced her to miss the vault final. Biles did her best to lighten the mood by cracking jokes. And when Roberson found herself struggling during a sometimes grueling rehab, Biles left a note in Roberson’s locker to encourage her to keep trying.
When Jade Carey After having trouble with her Amanar vault at the Olympic trials, Biles reminded the reigning floor exercise gold medalist to take a step forward on her dismount, which Carey laughingly noted she didn’t actually do.
“It’s really great to have someone like her supporting us all and helping us get through this,” Carey said.
A unique talent
It wasn’t always this way. Biles always had an unspoken outsider side. She was part of the team, the center of it most of the time, sure, but she was also one of a kind.
“I’m like, ‘Can you stop being so good and falling every now and then?’” said Alicia Sacramone Quinn, co-head of the U.S. senior women’s program. “Her talent, her level of difficulty and her overall ability as an athlete, it’s mind-blowing.”
When people in Quinn’s private life ask her about Biles, Quinn — whose resume includes 11 medals between the world championships and the Olympics — simply shakes her head.
“What you see on TV doesn’t even do her justice,” Quinn said. “Her gymnastics performances have attracted a much wider audience because people want to see what she can do.”
Or, in the case of some, what it cannot.
Call it the result of making incredibly difficult things seem incredibly easy, so often that it sets a standard that no one else — Biles herself sometimes included — can match.
Double-edged sword
That’s the beauty and also the weight of the Olympics, a lesson Biles learned after Tokyo, when all the glory and gold she had brought to the U.S. program over the years suddenly didn’t matter to a group determined, for whatever reason, to defeat her.
“I think there’s a certain unfairness to it, because you’ve only watched it once and if they fall, you’re like, ‘Oh, she sucks,’ and you’re like, ‘No, you’re still sitting on the couch and they’re still in the Olympics, what are you talking about, they suck? They’re the best in their country,’” Biles said. “So it’s tough.”
Biles willingly submits to the hot microscope that the Games are offering her for the third time, not out of ego, glory or money, but out of respect for her own talent.
“Knowing Simone and the fighter that she is, she’ll definitely want to go with what she feels is best,” her mother Nellie said. “I think that’s what Simone wants for Simone.”
And what Biles wants more than anything in the world at this point in her life is peace. That’s likely to be the case for an athlete who jokes, “I’m old now. Forget Grandma, I’m past that.”
She’s been through a lot. Maybe Tokyo in particular.
A final bow?
She has taken very methodical steps to protect herself before Paris. Her therapist remains available. Her family, Jonathan included, will be in the stands. She will be surrounded by friends on the competition floor who perhaps know better than anyone the pressure Biles faces.
And then Biles will greet the judges — those who are scoring and, in a way, those at home, too — and leap into the breach again, perhaps for the last time.
Maybe Paris will end up with her hand on her heart as “The Star-Bangled Banner” plays like so many times before. Maybe it will end up like Tokyo. Even though she has taken steps to ensure that doesn’t happen, she won’t really know until she does.
Regardless, Biles intends to leave on her terms. The woman who redefined gymnastics no longer lets herself be defined by her gymnastics or by the pundits who judge her once every four years.
She remained silent about what was to come. She will be the headliner a post-Olympic touras she did three years ago. After that, who knows?
The greatest gymnast of all time may have given a clue at the end of the Olympic trials. Biles was talking about the nature of being a top athlete and the inevitable opposition that comes with it. She spoke in generalities while leaving plenty of room to read between the lines.
“They want to see the fall, which is a shame because the sport hasn’t had athletes like we’ve seen before,” she said. “So you really have to give them flowers in the sport because once they’re gone, you’re going to miss them.”
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AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/paris-olympics-2024