It is apparent that black women always have to compete against more than just their opponents. Looking into the final, the 24-year-old said she had been “fighting all of those demons” relating to perfection and the weight of being an international celebrity. Simone Biles did a double pike dismount, which she hasn’t done in approximately 9 years, by drilling a slightly watered-down version of her usual routine in front of the crowd.

Not for everyone else or their expectations, but for herself. team, Biles, the most decorated gymnast in history, needed to challenge herself one more time. “It means more than all of the golds because I pushed through so much the last five years and the last week while I have even been here.”Īfter landing badly from a vault that went awry, the athlete decided to bow out from the women’s team gymnastics final, cheering her teammates on from the sidelines instead.

“I did it for me,” said Biles after taking bronze in the beam final won by Chinese teenager Guan Chenchen. So, on the final day of artistic gymnastics at the Games, after skipping all but one individual final because she was not mentally prepared, she appeared on the balance beam and performed well enough to win the bronze medal. To be sure about competing on the beam final she met twice with a sports psychologist, which she said was helpful because it allowed her to work through the strong emotions she felt after missing most of the Olympics. There were days when she failed even to breathe. Going into the balance beam final, Biles had daily health checks to see if she was healthy enough to return to competition. “I was a little bit nervous for the dismount just because we had to switch it and I probably haven’t done a double pike dismount since I was 12 years old, so it was kind of hard to control that.”Įven though the “twisties” are poorly understood, experts believe they may occur when gymnasts are stressed and overthink movements which are usually automatic, confusing the brain and throwing off their proprioception or sense of positional awareness. With all eyes on her in the women’s beam final, she bounced back in style with a strong performance, giving her a score of 14.000. After battling the “twisties” – a dangerous phenomenon experienced by gymnasts robbing them of all sense of direction during aerial feats, she came back to win bronze on beam finals. “I wasn’t expecting to walk away with a medal,” Biles said, adding, “To have one more opportunity to be at the Olympics meant the world to me.”īiles earned her 7th Olympic medal and second in Tokyo with a third-place finish in the balance beam final., a week after she took herself out of several competitions to deal with a mental block that prevented her from twisting while performing. Still, Biles did everything to perform her best. The comeback took a lot of strength to Biles as her aunt died a few days before the competition. She left the arena after the vault but later returned. Before withdrawing from the event, she scored her lowest Olympic vault score, 13.000. “We have to protect our mind and bodies and not just go out and do what the world wants us to do,” said Biles.Ī little over a week after stepping away from the meet to focus on her mental health, she returned to the competition. The US always placed the expectations much higher when it comes to Biles.īesides, by withdrawing from several Olympic events, to protect her wellbeing, Simone Biles – the most decorated gymnast – has transcended in her sports. She has won the bronze in the beam in the final to add to the silver she won in the team event.īiles is the most successful US gymnast of all time and winner of four gold medals and a bronze at Rio 2016. Biles has marked her Olympics return with bronze, after a mental health battle.

“You have no idea what we are going through- I got a lot of great comments, like a lot of outpouring support and love, but I also got a lot of bad stuff,” says Simon Biles, on winning bronze in Tokyo Olympics, 2020.

Simone biles a quitter