PARIS – The media ascends corrugated metal staircases to stands that almost reach the ceiling of Bercy Arena, the venue for the gymnastics disciplines at these Olympics.
They then watch the vaults and flips. It seems like Simone Biles can jump high enough and far enough from there to give the BBC correspondent in the front row a fistbump. For a little period on Thursday, it appeared as though Biles would have to accomplish those things, such as soar higher and execute an incredible feat of athletic artistry that only she can, in order to fulfil everyone’s expectation and take home the gold in the women’s all-around competition.
Biles thought for a while that she might have to do it as well. She knew going into the competition that defeating her main opponent, Rebeca Andrade of Brazil, would require more than a routine performance. It did, and the only reason the obstacles Biles overcome on Thursday to earn her sixth Olympic gold medal might go unnoticed is because everyone has grown accustomed to her making the seemingly impossible seem simple.
There were two challenges: one internal and one external. Andrade was the former, winning the silver medal in the all-around competition at the 2020–21 Tokyo Olympics. “I want to stop competing with Rebeca,” Biles declared. “I’ve never had a competitor that intimate.
That made me more aware of my surroundings. It made me feel like my best self.” She claimed that she had not intended to use “Biles II,” her special double-pike rendition of a Yurchenko vault that is considerably more amazing than those three words suggest.
It is a round-off back handspring into two backflips. But she was on it from the start, and its unparalleled skill difficulty of 6.4 gave her the advantage over all the other players, including Andrade. “Thank God we did the double pike today,” exclaimed Biles, who finished with a score of 59.131 against Andrade’s 57.932.
American Suni Lee earned third place. “I already knew she was an incredible athlete. “All right, I guess I’ll have to pull out the big guns.” It turned out we needed that extra firepower. After making a mistake on the uneven bars, where her knees swung slowly to the point where they nearly touched the floor, Biles was in third position halfway through the performance.
She paced with her hands on her hips as she looked at the scoreboard and saw that she was in third place. She placed her hands on her knees and bowed at the waist. She seemed irritated. Biles virtually sprinted up the back of the Paris 2024 staff member who was guiding the gymnasts in a single-file queue across the arena when it came time for the balancing beam.
She remarked, “I’m not sure what the camera caught.” “That’s not the bars that I’ve been preparing for, so I was probably praying to every god in the universe in an attempt to refocus and recentre myself. Bars is the event that I have never failed at, either here or back in Houston.
I felt a little let down by myself because I can really rock some bars.” This was the turning point in her internal struggle that she needed to overcome. Naturally, Biles had pulled out of the Tokyo Games after getting the “twisties,” a disorienting feeling gymnasts occasionally encounter due to a disconnect between the mind and body. In addition to sparking a national and even worldwide conversation on the mental health problems that athletes experience, Biles’ decision to withdraw from competition put her future in peril.
She remarked, “I never thought I’d step foot on a gymnastics floor again. That was three years ago.” She now attends therapy on Thursdays. She even claimed to have spoken with her therapist at seven Thursday morning, Paris time, during one of the innumerable mind-clearing, mind-focusing sessions that have been routine for the woman who may be the world’s best athlete, pound for pound and within the parameters of her sport.
Yes, Simone Biles pulled off the biggest comebacks of her life and career here on Thursday night. Perhaps the best testament to her talent is that nobody seemed shocked that she pulled it off. Not a single person.
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