Simone Biles. Champion.
Stop criticizing Simone Biles.
I mean it.
Simone is a national treasure, the greatest gymnast of all time. She faltered this week at the Olympics, dropped out of team events and right on cue, keyboard couch potatoes began attacking her.
They called her a snowflake, a head case. A national embarrassment. As if they’re conflating this gymnast with the brats on the U.S. Women’s Soccer team.
She’s nothing like those unpatriotic morons.
Simone Biles is a 24-year-old elite athlete who’s spent almost her entire life training for a sport that is grueling and dangerous. Earlier this week she experienced what experts say is “aerial disorientation” while performing on the vault. It’s akin to what pilots experience in fog or darkness, where they lose their place in space.
Actually gymnasts have a different word for what happens when their bodies and brains disconnect. They call it the “twisties.“
Biles, 24, told reporters shortly after her exit that she was “having a little bit of the twisties.” Several athletes and gymnasts have described “twisties” as a mental block that affects physical performance.
Christine Myers, a Birmingham, Alabama gymnastics coach described it this way:
“Imagine skydiving and your parachute won’t open. Your body starts adding extra twists and flips to the skill you’re supposed to be doing, and it can affect even the skills that feel as routine as walking to an elite gymnast. Your brain wants nothing more than to perform the intended skill correctly, but your body feels like it suddenly has a mind of its own.”
Myers reiterated, “Because the twisties are mainly psychological, the harder you try to push through, the harder the twisties push back.”
Apparently it’s terrifying.
If a swimmer loses his mental focus during a competition, he’s disqualified, he doesn’t drown. If a basketball player has a mental lapse he missing a layup, he doesn’t break his neck. If a gymnast becomes disoriented she could wind up paralyzed. This is a dangerous sport.
Simone wasn’t hurt when she bobbled after her vault, but she was rattled and disappointed because she completed just 1 1/2 twists instead of the 2 1/2 as she planned.
She dropped out of the team competition saying later that she was worried that a poor performance from her on the uneven bars might keep the team off the podium.
The Americans won silver with Biles in her warmups cheering for them from the sidelines.
That’s a team player.
Simone didn’t whine, didn't throw a tantrum, didn’t blame anyone else.
She didn’t disrespect her country or flag like some have done in Tokyo.
If you know anything about this Olympian you know that she’s not a quitter. Simone Biles spent time in foster care as a kid but was rescued by her grandparents who adopted her when she was six. She began competing almost immediately and was performing at an elite level by 14.
Her mother, Nellie Biles, owns a training facility where Simone and a number of gymnasts prepare for competition.
According to a recent story in The Wall Street Journal, Biles’ mother says she opened the center to get her daughter out of intensive one-on-one training and to keep her humble.
The idea to build a team around Biles came from her mother, Nellie, who both wanted to keep her daughter grounded and give her family a platform for business success. She has gone from a self-professed gym “rookie” when Simone and her younger sister started in the sport to a gym owner, beginning when she opened WCC in 2015.
When Nellie Biles hired the gym’s women’s coaches— the married couple of Laurent Landi, who is the women’s program director, and Cecile Landi, who is assistant head coach to the women’s team— she gave them an unusual mandate. She wanted someone who could make sure Simone got less attention.
“Previously Simone had a one on one…and I didn’t care for that,” Nellie Biles said. “Because she is not better than anyone else. She should not be the little trophy girl at the gym. She is part of the team…She is still there to maximize her potential.”
America should wrap its arms around this athlete and thank her for giving us so many breathtaking moments as she completed superhuman feats on the balance beam, the vault, the uneven bars and in floor exercises during the Rio Olympics.
Have you seen the elevation this 4-foot-8-inch dynamo achieves? It’s jaw-dropping.
Twenty four is practically a geriatric in gymnastics. In a recent interview Simone Biles confessed that when the 2020 Olympics were postponed for a year she was despondent at the thought of another year of non-stop training.
She stuck with it.
Whether or not she competes next week in individual events or stays on the sidelines and cheers her teammates, there is only one way to describe Simone Biles: An American Champ.
