'Simone Biles doesn't owe the frothing Olympic viewers a primetime show. Her greatest move this Olympics is asserting that she is more than the sum of her medals. She's real'
her mental health was suffering from the pressure to deliver gold and the weight of being the gymnast widely considered the greatest of all time. “This Olympic Games, I wanted it to be for myself when I came in—and I felt like I was still doing it for other people,” a tearful Biles said. “That hurts my heart because doing what I love has been kind of taken away from me to please other people.”
“Fighting all those demons” affected her performance, and instead of pushing through it as she might have in the past, Biles withdrew. “At the end of the day, where we’re human too so we have to protect our mind in our body rather than just go out there and do what the world wants us to do,”When you consider the weight Biles has been carrying, it's surprising that she was competing at all.
For years now, Biles has felt she's been the star of a sport whose governing body has betrayed her. In 2018,that she is among the hundreds of gymnasts who were sexually abused by longtime national team doctor Larry Nassar. “I’ve felt a bit broken and the more I try to shut off the voice in my head, the louder it screams,” sheon Twitter a day before Nassar's sentencing hearing. As the most decorated gymnast of all time, Biles might have retired before Tokyo.
author Chloe Angyal. Biles doesn't owe the frothing Olympic viewers a primetime show. Her greatest move this Olympics is asserting that she is more than the sum of her medals. She's real.Sign Up Now
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