Simone Biles, the gold and Paris 2024: her revenge against herself and her demons
Víctor García
August 1, 2024

She knew it. The other competitors knew it. The audience knew it, too. Wearing bib number 391 and a black leotard with silver accents, she performed a flawless routine, with everyone’s eyes following her movements until she executed a double backflip that marked the end of her performance. All eyes remained hypnotized by Simone Biles, as if no one else was in the gym. One of the most challenging vaults of all time (a Yurchenko double pike), which she first performed at the World Championships in Antwerp, she repeated in her first appearance at the Paris 2024 Olympics, just before winning the team gold. On Thursday, she claimed another gold in one of the most coveted Olympic events, the all-around competition. Simone Biles is back. The smile at the end of the routine and the sprint to hug her coach, Cecile Landi—a brief moment filled with memories as close as they were traumatic.

[Without air conditioning and cramped on a bus: this is how athletes travel]

This reunion, beyond the first gold of the Paris harvest in the team event, was the crucial moment that showed the world and herself that she was, indeed, back. Closing a chapter painfully opened three years ago in Tokyo, by the vault, the same apparatus with which she closed the presentation that contributed to the U.S. team gold in the current Olympic Games. In the Japanese capital, it was the moment when something exploded inside her that, as she would later confess, nullified her inner strength and will. Thus, the then four-time gold medalist left the arena, after scoring 13.766 points, her lowest personal score in an Olympic Games.

“I have to focus on my mental health”

“After the performance I did, I just didn’t want to continue,” she said to the media. “I have to focus on my mental health,” she concluded while trying to explain, without much success, what was happening to her. She would find the answers over time and with professional help. She had to face an unprecedented “injury,” not one of the physical problems she used to experience and overcome: it was a malady that affected her mind and simply paralyzed her.

THE UNSEEN PROBLEMS OF BILES

Her path to recovery to reach Paris, detailed in the Netflix documentary, ‘Simone Biles: The Journey to Gold,’ demonstrates the complexity of a process where she had to relearn how to handle the pressure of high competition, along with dealing with the avalanche of criticism generated by her withdrawal from Tokyo. In this journey of rediscovery, Biles assimilated events that marked her life: being adopted by her grandparents because her parents had addiction problems; experiencing racial discrimination in the world of sports; being a victim of abuse by Larry Nassar, the doctor who worked for the United States Gymnastics Federation.

Traumatic moments that seemed locked away did not prevent her from bursting onto the scene with 4 golds at the World Championships in Antwerp in 2014 and, 2 years later, at the Rio de Janeiro Games. In Rio, those impossible stunts, in a 16-year-old body just 1.47 meters tall, were a kind of calling card. There she made history as the first American gymnast to win four gold medals in a single Olympics (one with the team and three individually). The whole world, which bowed at her feet, predicted a long reign. In Tokyo, the global spotlight was on her again, generating the expectation that she would break the nine-medal barrier of Latynina, the most decorated Olympic gymnast in history, and approach Belarusian Vitaly Scherbo, the sport’s figure with the most medals between world championships and Olympic games. But what happened, happened: a mental block that disoriented her during aerial maneuvers.

“Not just doing what the world wants us to do”

“Coming to the Olympics and being the main star is no easy task. I think mental health is more prevalent in sports. We have to protect our minds and our bodies and not just go out and do what the world wants us to do. It’s a struggle when you’re fighting with your own head,” she stated when psychiatric work began to bear fruit and she began to understand what she was going through. She had to come back and, once again, the World Championships in Antwerp, with five new medals (4 gold), raising her personal tally to 30 medals, confirmed in 2023 that her mind was once again in balance with her body.

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Thus she arrived in Paris, with the weight of responsibility doubled by this eagerly awaited return. Just a few evolutions made it clear that the magic was back. It was the Olympic reunion, crowned by an ovation that did not want to end after the medal contest on Tuesday, July 30, where the American dream team lived up to its star-studded lineup, including Sunisa Lee and Jordan Chiles.The recognition was for everyone, but it was clear that when she bowed her head to receive the gold medal, this ceremony that she had experienced so many times before held special significance for Biles. And this Thursday, with her gold in the all-around, she left no doubt about who the queen of gymnastics is.

More than a celebration, it was a personal revenge and the triumph, hopefully definitive, over her own demons, exorcised in 3 years of comprehensive therapy. The 20,000 people who packed the Bercy Arena, including sports and entertainment stars, understood that they were witnessing the rebirth of one of the greatest in history and one of the strong candidates for the central figure of the games. But, possibly, for Simone, that is not the priority, nor what keeps her up at night. Returning at 27 to coordinate mind and body, to do what she loves and makes her happy, may be the most coveted of medals for all that magic concentrated in just 1.47 meters.

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