(Dobbs) Simone Biles: Brave In More Ways Than One
Critics talk tough, but couldn't stumble through a somersault.
I’ve been wondering about Simone Biles. With the record books waiting for her, with her team’s hopes resting on her, with America’s fans rooting for her, with the world’s eyes watching her, how hard must it have been for the world’s best gymnast to pull out of Olympic competition?
She had won four golds at the last Summer Olympics in Rio. She had won every individual all-around competition since she was 16. As the five-time 1976 gold medalist Nadia Comaneci said of Biles, “You have somebody who can do something we cannot even design on a paper.”
But this time, although she’s the first and only woman ever to have nailed the treacherous “Yurchenko double pike vault”— it has so many gravity-defying leaps and twists and turns, and so little margin for error, that most of us can’t even comprehend it— apparently she got spooked. It’s a phenomenon known in gymnastics as “the twisties,” losing your orientation while rotating in the air. “It's honestly petrifying,” Biles wrote on Instagram, “trying to do a skill but not having your mind & body in sync.” So she withdrew. As journalist Brady Langmann wrote in Esquire, “If you have a slip of mind in what she does for a living, you might leave with a broken neck.”
Or worse.
You’d think everyone would get that. But you’d think wrong. The Twittersphere has laid bare the backbiters, armchair critics who probably couldn’t do a simple somersault themselves. They have opined online that Biles “caved to pressure” and that “she should have pushed through it.” One example: British media figure Piers Morgan wrote of Biles, “You let down your team-mates, your fans and your country.” Another, from conservative radio talk show host Charlie Kirk: “We are raising a generation of weak people like Simone Biles.”
I have words I won’t use here to describe craven critics like these.
But I also have words I’ll shout to the rafters to describe Simone Biles: smart, brave, gutsy, gracious.
Smart, because only a fool would put not just her career but her mobility on the line when her confidence has hit a wall. She told reporters after she quit, “I say put mental health first.” If most athletes suffer a slump, they stop hitting home runs, or don’t win the hundred yard dash. If an athlete like Biles suffers a slump, she can leave the competition in a wheelchair.
Brave, because she had to know that some would find fault with something they themselves don’t even begin to understand. Biles had written earlier in the week that sometimes she felt “the weight of the world” on her shoulders. Who amongst us has had to bear that weight, let alone would have the courage to tell that world, I just can’t do it again, not now, maybe never?
Gutsy, because she’d already shown that she could break new barriers, not just with unfathomable gymnastic feats that the rest of us wouldn’t even dream of trying, but with public positions on controversial social issues that many athletes wouldn’t ever dream of taking. Remember Colin Kaepernick, the Super Bowl quarterback for the 49ers who took a knee during the National Anthem to protest police brutality? Whether you love him or hate him, today he can’t even get a job in football.
Gracious, because Biles didn’t go back to her cardboard bed at the Olympic Village and sulk. Yesterday, at the women’s all-around gymnastics final where she was the defending champ, she showed up and sat in the stands, rooting for her team. Fellow American Suni Lee— with Biles cheering her on— took gold in the women’s individual all-around. Team USA equalled the Olympic record in the event.
But graciousness evidently is something else the tough-talking bellyachers don’t seem to recognize. Piers Morgan went on to tweet about Biles, “Nothing heroic or brave about quitting.” It reminded me of Donald Trump’s contemptible chop at John McCain, generally hailed a hero after being a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam: “I don't like losers.” It only goes to show how small some people are. Because whether Simone Biles competes again or not, she is a hero, sacrificing everything, from her records to her reputation, to set an example for people whose mental health has become a handicap. And she is brave, first because for eight years she has put her body through unimaginably dangerous gyrations, and second, because she’s willing to show the world she’s vulnerable.
Simone Biles is a role model, and always will be. She will be remembered as a champion, in the same spirit as Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut, who won three golds and a silver at the Munich Olympics almost fifty years ago. And figure skater Peggy Fleming, who won the only Olympic gold for the United States in 1968 in Grenoble. And track and field star Jesse Owens, an African-American who brought home four gold medals from Adolf Hitler’s Berlin Olympics in 1936. And speed swimmer Mark Spitz, who got seven golds— and set seven records— in Munich.
A few years after Spitz’s Olympic triumphs, I interviewed him at a World Cup event in Austria, and he told me a story that has some bearing on Biles’ story today. His first five events in Munich were the five in which he always excelled. He had every confidence that he would win. And he did. But there were still two to come, and they were the two about which he had doubts. So he went to the team coach and said, I’ve won five golds, I’m going to hang it up and go out a winner. But the coach talked him out of it. Spitz won those last two too.
You might think that story means Biles should have gritted her teeth and gone for the gold. But here’s the difference. What Mark Spitz stood to lose was his pride. What Biles stood to lose was her health, physical and mental both.
That’s why, making the decision she made was smart, brave, gutsy, and gracious.
For almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks, a political columnist for The Denver Post, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe. He won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. Some of his essays also are published— with images— on a website he co-founded, BoomerCafe.com.
I completely agree with you. She could have injured herself for life. How dare the commentators pretend to know what it takes to be an Olympic gold medal winner.
You’re so right on… thank you for this, Greg. Really enjoy your writing. Support and blessings for champion, SIMONE.