re: Gymnastics - Simone Biles dominant again

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She's played (and won) through pain you couldn't even imagine.

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I'd bet I could imagine quite a bit.

She also quit on her team and her country.

Dad taught me as a kid that quitting is habit forming. He told me that quitting tells you more about a person's character than winning does.

Two bits of wisdom I carried with me for decades

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Dad taught me as a kid that quitting is habit forming.

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Did you make it pro or to the Olympics in any sport?

No? Ok. Are you still trying? No again

Well then you quit

She had 4 golds and a silver at last year’ World Championship as well

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This was not about her being below the normal level of performance

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Just shut up already. She said it was. The vault was the last straw for her. In her OWN WORDS

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The trouble started in the early days of her competition, when Biles struggled through a number of individual events. “I was not physically capable,” she said. “Every avenue we tried, my body was like, ‘Simone, chill. Sit down. We’re not doing it.’ And I’ve never experienced that.”

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“I should have quit way before Tokyo, when Larry Nassar was in the media for two years,” Biles said. “It was too much. But I was not going to let him take something I’ve worked for since I was 6 years old. I wasn’t going to let him take that joy away from me.

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she removed herself from the team finals to focus on her mental health. She returned to earn a bronze medal on beam but told the committee the lingering trauma from her abuse at the hands of Nassar played a factor in her decision to opt out

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I watched Willis Reed and Larry Bird struggle under obvious physical pain to deliver for their team mates. Thats what elite athletes do.

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Also he mustve missed the point of this thread that Biles once again won the overall.

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Doesn’t erase the fact that she quit on her team before lol

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Just shut up already. She said it was.

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Ah, the argument by insult. So compelling and persuasive. She scored over 60 in the all-around on Day 1 of trials. During qualifications at the Olympics she had the highest all-around score.
Nowhere in her comments is she referring to scores, which is what several comments have alluded to and what I'm addressing in the comment you cite.

As for the team final, Biles "told journalists earlier that day that she was "having a little bit of the twisties"". That's from a BBC article from the Olympics.

From a month ago on NBC's site:
Biles explained at the time that the “twisties” is when a gymnast loses spatial awareness midair and can’t judge when and where to land.

"So I open landed like that, and as soon as I land, I kind of grin, and I’m like, 'S---,'" she said in the preview clip.



It's like she got lost in the air
Got lost in the air
Podium training
Multiple gymnasts that watched her were able to see she didn't know where she was in the air, and she confirmed that. When you watch the podium training video, she does the world's hardest vault incredibly well, then in competition she has no air awareness.
Post event presser
She says here she didn't want to 'do something silly out there' and get hurt and also jeopardize the team scores.

She was struggling for a while, yet she kept at it, which is what everyone wants her to do, except when they change the position and say she should have pulled out for the good of the team, yet she was the highest scoring gymnast in the world, so leaving prior to Tokyo would have been seen as hurting the team - then when she can't figure out where she is in the air and is a danger to herself and the team scores, that's not good enough either.

If you want to chastise her for not getting things squared away at the first sign of trouble well before Tokyo - that is harsh IMO, but a fair point to bring up. You could say that is simply a failure to get yourself in the right place as a competitor. But it's obvious that she kept grinding leading up to Tokyo and tried to make it work. And at the team final, it was simply stupid to stay in the competition at that point.

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Because her ego absolutely could not handle not going to the Olympics, even it was the best move for her health. She knew she was struggling but no way was she going to sit at home and not have the focus on her. It would be eating her alive if she was home and not in Tokyo with her goat outfit on and seeing her team do well without her. That would have been wayyyy worse for her than going, and quitting on the team while out there.

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This is something that applies well before Tokyo - and you might be right. Honestly I don't know.

If she announced prior to Olympic trials, or maybe at the conclusion of trials that she needed to deal with health issues - would you still be criticizing her for quitting or bailing on her team? She was the world's best gymnast, despite those issues she was dealing with. Seems to me that people would have still gone after her and said 'suck it up' because of the scores she was getting. There never seems to be a right answer for her in this situation.

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You keep responding to everyone somehow thinking that whatever you say will magically make it fiction

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I'm not trying to convince anyone. Im laughing at the idiot that was shitting on Biles for "quitting on her team" and taking someone else's roster spot then using Larry bird as an example of how to do things right for playing 45 games out of an 82 game season and "taking someone else's roster spot".

It's on the coaches to decide whether or not someone goes, u cant blame an athlete for trying to see if they can play when they are still arguably the greatest in the world

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She’s still very good