In her comeback to the Olympic Games on August 3, Simone Biles won the bronze medal for a workmanlike job on the balance beam. She didn’t pull any punches. She gave the punches she could. The ones that were still in her. 

After these Olympics, on the balance beam of life, is there any doubt, Biles deserves a gold something? With all her events completed, the biggest star in U.S.A. gymnastics ever leaves these 2020 games held in 2021 a survivor.

Consider Biles’ week plagued by the “twisties,” when a  gymnast feels out of synch with her body, unable to tell up from down while tucking and rolling and flinging herself in the air. And then there was the overall pressure of a games that perhaps never should have been. One year delayed? Why not two? Why not cancel it during a world-wide pandemic?  

Does any country value a medal in Global Public Health? (No).

Or were the financial obligations to sponsors and NBC too great to ignore at the expense of reason? (Yes). 

All that put pressure on Biles, an Olympic legend and a known public face, to be the marquee name. In fact, the only justification for the games to be sold in a time of disease and division was that the Olympics could be a positive, unifying world force.   

Instead, it was just a world-wide distraction dwarfed by the virus that has grown to nearly 200 million confirmed cases and claimed 4.25 million lives. It’s death on an Olympic scale. Give the virus a medal. It evolved into a variant.

And of course, on top of all that, consider Biles’ personal story as a victim at the hands of  a former Olympic team doctor, the now disgraced mass sexual abuser, Larry Nasser.

With all that compounded, would you feel like jumping for joy on demand?  In Japan? And she doesn’t even like sushi. (Did you see her reaction to a platter on the Today Show?)

On her comeback Tuesday, in her final individual event, though everyone wanted to see Biles do the thing she will be forever known for—her signature move — a dismounting double-twisting, double-back somersault–—she didn’t do it.

She went back to a move she last did at age 12. 

She had already done so much for these Olympics that seemed lost without fans. And for a few days, the games were without one of its biggest names on the gym floor.

Biles was neither chilling nor copping out. When she withdrew, she knew the depths of her team’s ability and selflessly went from competitor to cheerleader—encouraging young talent like Sunisa “Suni” Lee, the 18-year-old Asian American who had been a close No. 2 to Biles in competitions leading up to the Olympics. 

In her first Olympics, Lee said she was just going for silver. But then when her opportunity came, and with Biles’ blessing, she seized the moment, and by just .135 of a point won the gold in the all-around individual competition, the major event that was supposed to have been Biles’ moment.

Christy Price

Posts by Christy Price