Simone Biles makes history in Olympics return from mental health issues
BERCY ARENA — Simone Biles underlined her name in the gymnastics history books for the umpteenth time as she became the first woman ever to land the hardest vault in history at an Olympic Games.
Three years ago in Tokyo, Biles had withdrawn from the team event midway through after suffering a mental block known as “the twisties” during her vault.
The American subsequently skipped the individual all-around, vault, floor and uneven bars events, but did return to win bronze in the beam, her seventh Olympic medal.
And Biles made an emphatic return to Olympic competition in Paris by nailing her vault, arguably the most iconic move in her impressive playbook, the Yurchenko double pike, known as the Biles II.
It has an enormous difficulty rating of 6.4, the highest of any move, and no woman had ever landed it at an Olympic Games – until now. Biles racked up a score of 15.800 with it to guarantee virtually a place in the vault final.
Appropriately enough, Biles had started her Games on the balance beam, the only apparatus she completed in Tokyo, winning bronze.
Her withdrawal from the team event at Tokyo 2020 was one of the stories of the Games. The undisputed GOAT of gymnastics and defending four-time gold medallist, she was expected to bring home another haul of gold from Japan but instead only claimed a team silver and an individual bronze.
Armchair critics laid into her for pulling out and “leaving her team-mates in the lurch”, but there was a much louder blowback of support for the gymnast,
“The conversation is not taboo anymore,” said golfer Rory McIlroy, no stranger himself to the pressures of national expectation. “Just as someone has a knee injury or elbow injury, if they don’t feel 100 per cent right mentally, that is an injury too.”
These injuries are harder to see of course, but to the naked eye Biles cut a relaxed figure in Paris. When the cameras cut to her waiting to walk out, she let out an enormous yawn. Once she was out in the arena the smile switched on and she waved to the 15,000 fans screaming her name: among them actor Tom Cruise, singer Ariana Grande, footballer Antoine Griezmann and Vogue editor Anna Wintour.
As she waited for her team-mate’s score to allow her to start her beam routine, she sat on the edge of the mat, as though there were not hundreds of thousands – perhaps millions – watching and waiting. Most of them wanted her to succeed. But Biles knows full well there are those out who wish her ill, for whatever reason.
“They’ll still say like, ‘Oh my gosh, are you going to quit again?’ And like, and ‘If I did, what are you going to do about it? Tweet me some more?’” a bullish Biles said last month.
“Like I’ve already dealt with it for three years. But yeah, they want to see us fail.”
