On Tuesday, July 27th the biggest news in the world was the USA Women’s Gymnastic Team losing a gold medal to the Russian team and more importantly Simone Biles withdrawing from Olympic competition due to “health reasons.”
Going into the Olympics the U.S. Women’s was considered almost unbeatable and certainly the strongest part of the U.S. team — Simone Biles seemed to have achieved physical and mental perfection. There was almost a Zen quality about how she was performing her routines and many were calling her the GOAT, myself included. The diminutive athlete was basking in the glory of world admiration and adding to her legend in the 2021 games was a certainty. Well, the last part was correct but not in the way we though.
As the competition began, two things happened. The Russian women showed surprising strength and the American women lost their swagger and made some mental errors that took them down a peg, but it was Simone that fell the farthest. She made mistakes in her performances that seemed beneath her abilities. More than that, her confidence evaporated. That winning look she had previously displayed was gone and stressed out and even frightened. Then in the finals she withdrew. She was helped off the floor but came back later in her sweats and tried to cheer her teammates on.
At her news conference she admitted that the health issues she mentioned were of mental health. Not hard to see why. Being in Japan would cause a strain on her body clock and mind in that everything she does is at a time that she would be resting and sleeping back home. Her eating, sleeping, practicing etc. would be backwards. Also carrying all this attention around and slipping up on the world stage would be devastating to her ego. In 2016 at the Rio Games she came out as the best gymnast in the world, male or female. We expected perfection from her, and that’s a heavy burden to bear. We were also over confident, thinking that this might be the best U.S. Women’s Team ever. That was just a bit too much and they were ripe for a big fall. A silver medal is nothing to sneeze at but we were all expecting so much more. As for Simone, she still is one of the greatest American athletes of all time. She just seems a little more human now.