BarcelonaWhen Simone Biles’s feet were nailed to the floor of the Ariake Pavilion, some magnesium powder that had been left on the ground was lifted. And cries of euphoria have come down from the stands. In a spectator Olympics without spectators, the other gymnasts have become the cheerleaders of the American gymnast. During their exercise at the fixed bar, more than once they could no longer be silent, because they wanted to try to get their support to Biles. His complicity. Simone Biles bids farewell to the Games with a bronze medal, but has won far more than a piece of metal. Its best prize, the support received by millions of people willing to listen to it. And his gift to the world, that laughter with which he has illuminated the pavilion after nailing his exercise. “I didn’t expect to get any medals. I just wanted to go out and do it for myself,” he explained.
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Just a week after that trampoline jump in which he said enough, Biles was back in competition. A week that has passed as slowly as if it were a whole year. “It’s been a very long week and five years,” she admitted. While in Japan hundreds of athletes pursued their dreams of the last five years competing, Biles, the best gymnast in history, worked alone in a Japanese gym to try to regain positive feelings. Little was known about what he was doing. Only he appeared every day in the Ariake Pavilion to cheer on the other gymnasts in the United States. And then she worked alone to try to be able to play a final. A week ago Biles was unable to continue participating in the team competition, in which he would win a silver after making a single jump. And then he was giving up all the finals, aware that he wasn’t ready. No one knows herself as herself. “I didn’t want to go on, I want to focus on my mental health. It’s time to protect our mind, our body … Don’t just do what others expect you to do. I don’t trust myself so much anymore and I don’t i want to go out on a stretcher if i have an accident, ”he said.
First, he gave up the individual competition, when his friend Sunisa Lee won gold. He then also gave up parallel bars, ground exercise and trampoline jumping. Just yesterday he announced that he would participate in the fixed bar. The apparatus where five years ago, in Rio de Janeiro, she finished third when she had options to be champion. The exercise in which all the jumps are in one direction, which has made Biles feel more comfortable. Competitive as it is, it has continued to work in Tokyo with the sole aim of being able to say goodbye to competing Olympism, as, in theory, it should not reach the 2024 Games in Paris. Her coach, the Frenchwoman Cecile Landi, encourages her to try to take part in the Games to be held at her home in France, even in a single device. But Biles has been thinking about life after the competition for a long time. In the future it has been won.
As five years ago, Biles finished third. “This time it’s more special. I will value this medal much more than the one in Rio,” he reflected. He ended up behind two young Chinese girls so small they seemed to fly over the bar, while Biles carried a lot of pressure on his shoulders. Guan Chenchen, 16, took the gold after daring with a very brave program (14,633), with which he beat his compatriot Tang Xijing, 18 (14,233), and Biles. 14,000). And while Chenchen was doing his exercise, from the band Biles cheered him on. As if all the love she has received from her rivals is coming back, like a Chenchen who cites Biles as her example to follow. Only they, these women who started hurting their bodies with every fall when they were little, know what it means to be on that little 10cm bar playing your four or five year job in a matter of seconds. One centimeter, one wrong step, and falls. The difference between coming out with your head held high by the bar, when you look full of grace, or falling. They are the ones who best understand everything that Biles has explained these days. He prefers to prioritize mental health, because he knows that in case of not being well, in this sport in which many times the competitors are seen as if they were girls playing in a happy yard, they can get very hurt. In fact, they are athletes who at 24, like Biles, have already spent more hours working than many people in their lifetime. That they have been hurt. They have fallen and risen.
Two medals and a legacy
Without Biles, gymnastics has shone as well, with young Brazilian Rebeca Andrade winning gold. With Sunisa Lee saving American honor in the individual competition, after the Russian team victory, in both men and women. On the last day, the Chinese Zou Jingyuan and the Japanese Daiki Hashimoto took the last golds, to parallel bars and fixed bar. If the Russians won by teams, they haven’t won any individual medals in a tournament that seemed destined to be Biles ’, not so long ago. The American was to be the queen of the Tokyo Games. He aspired to five or six medals. He walks with a silver and a bronze, but his great success is to have given voice to thousands of athletes who did not dare to stop, lest they say they are cowards, losers. She, the most successful gymnast of recent years, no longer had to prove to anyone who she is. And it could stop and become an example of millions of people who often shut up when they don’t feel well. No, Biles was not born to shut up. And today he has spoken about the bar acting safely. The woman who had noticed how the pressure of not being able to fail brands, managers, spectators and friends made her lose security when she turned the sky, has done a round exercise, with admirable security. The start, with a double carpal jump, has nailed it. She was serious. But once he was seen with his feet on the ground, he smiled, put his hand on his heart making a gesture of having lifted an overweight and received the love of all the other gymnasts. More than 400 people were in the stands. Gymnasts from other disciplines, coaches and some admirers who have come in who knows how, like a Japanese man carrying a photo of Biles’ two dogs, two bulldogs, to try to make the American feel better accompanied. Biles signed an autograph, laughing.
In the end, everyone queued up to greet her. Also the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, and the president of the International Gymnastics Federation, the Japanese Morinari Watanabe. I hope they hear it, they. And that, in the future, talking about the need to take care of mental health is a very normal thing. Biles has made the gesture to take care of herself, but also to be heard. To be a spokesperson for millions of people. The young American has learned many things in her 24 years of life. And one is that you have to be brave and speak out loud. Only then do the walls fall and move forward. Biles, not so long ago, was one of the last gymnasts to publicly denounce having been sexually abused by U.S. Federation physician Larry Nassar. But once he did, he realized the strength of his words. And how the sport belongs to women like them, and not to managers who did not know how to protect it. She has learned to defend herself.
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