Tokyo Olympics: Why Simone Biles' Tokyo withdrawal won't impact her legacy

One could almost imagine the internet fury that’d be set loose after Simone Biles pulled out of the US team in the team gymnastics event which was perfectly articulated by the reigning king of cringe-posts – Piers Morgan.

Morgan, whose playing career consists of facing six deliveries from Bret Lee, was indignant about athletes using “mental health issues” to justify “poor performances” in elite sports. Claiming that kids needed better role models, he blamed Twitter’s virtue-signallers for “fuelling the culture of celebrating weakness”.

His arguments seemed to echo those who constantly claim that wokiesm and its unnamed allies are responsible for America’s degradation, from shining city on the top of the hill to a nation of bickerers who give up the moment things get tough.

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Frankly, Simone Biles doesn’t need any lessons – on morality or sporting – from keyboard warriors whose idea of risk is trying a different sandwich dressing for their grilled cheese. Biles is perfectly within her rights to prioritise her mental health and physical health.

Not having the right mindset while attempting a difficult move can be catastrophic for gymnasts. A case in point is Russian gymnast Elena Mukhina who tried to make a comeback after a broken leg in 1979. Attempting a difficult move (the Thomas Salto), she broke her neck two weeks before the 1980 Summer Olympics and spent her life as a quadriplegic. The Thomas Salto was eventually removed from the Code of Points and is banned.

Add the fact, that this is not a normal year, and not a normal Olympics. Any athlete who is competing out there is doing so in extremely trying circumstances, haunted by uncertainty and the mortality of their loved ones. The Olympics is a fight to regain some of the pre-pandemic normalcy but it’s very hard to do that without spectators.

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Also, Simone Biles doesn’t need mental health lessons from keyboard warriors, or as one Twitter user put it, from folks who can’t keep their mask on for five minutes in Starbucks.

Most of us would buckle under the pressure of even drawing a straight line with everyone watching. Olympians don’t. Biles has overcome traumas that would destroy lesser mortals.

She grew up in foster care as her alcoholic mother couldn’t take care of her, often, in Biles’ own words: “Ending up feeding the cat.”

In school she was mocked for her athletic figure.

Hackers accessed and leaked her medical records to show she had ADHD.

In 2018 her brother was charged and finally acquitted in a fatal shooting incident.

She was also abused by US gymnastics team doctor Dr Larry Nassar and promised she wouldn’t let the ‘horrific experience define her’.

Biles is here not because of the road that lies in front of her, but because of the challenges she has overcome to get here.

She overcame her fears to win five gold medals in the last Olympics, becoming among a select group of athletes who starts to dominate a sports so much that they transcend it like Serena Williams, Muhammad Ali, Roger Federer or Usain Bolt.

Such is her legacy that she has four separate elements named after her – the Biles on beam, Biles on vault, Biles on floor and Biles II on floor. She is the first woman to complete a Yurchenko double piked on the vault during competition.

Competing at the Olympics is the pinnacle of human sporting achievement (barring some sports) which explains why even world number ones often crumble under pressure. Biles didn’t.

The pandemic’s uncertainty also meant athletes didn’t know if the event they had spent their entire lives preparing for would even taken place. Would they become the next Eulace Peacock?

For the uninitiated, Peacock was a one-time rival of Jesse Owens who pulled a hamstring and missed Berlin 1936. The rest is history. Jesse Owens went on to win four medals in track-and-field, making the Fuhrer re-think his idea of racial superiority. Peacock never got the chance.

The next two Olympics were cancelled thanks to the 2nd World War and by 1948, he had retired.

Imagine dealing with that uncertainty that your entire life’s preparation could be for nought.

As Texas went under total lockdown in March 2020, Biles sat idle for seven weeks. She had said: “I got to process all the emotions. I got to go through being angry, sad, upset, happy, annoyed. I got to go through all of it by myself, without anybody telling me what to feel. I wanted to give up. But it would have been dumb because I’ve worked way too hard.”

In fact, one ought to accept Biles took the best decision for herself and her team. Instead of going for personal glory, Biles gave up her spot on the team because she wasn’t feeling up to it. It was an honest admission of one’s own deficiency. It takes a great deal of mental strength to admit one’s faults and for that we should be grateful to her.

And lest we forget, gymnastics is a remarkably diverse discipline which requires one to master four environments – the vault, the uneven bars, the beams, and the floor.

Biles might have shown that she’s only human but she’s a far more remarkable one that most of her detractors could ever hope to be.

As for Morgan and his ilk, they should remember no matter what they do, when the annals of history are observed they won’t even be an angry footnote when people talk about Simone Biles’ achievements.

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