In 1978 the women’s world champion in gymnastics was Elena Mukhina of the Soviet Union. The US had not boycotted the Moscow Olympics yet because Russia had not invaded Afghanistan, yet. Russia wanted to put on a show for the rest of the world at the 1980 games. Mukhina was world champion because she had a ridiculous array of moves on all four women’s apparatus. She had mad skills that no woman in gymnastics was doing at that time. She was challenged by her Soviet coaches to do more to crush the competition at the 1980 Olympics. The Romanians led by Nadia Comaneci had destroyed the Russians at the 1976 games in Montreal. That was not going to happen again. To please her coaches, she challenged herself and in 1979 she broke her leg while training. With the Olympics fast approaching, she was pressed back into action, training with the required risk taking. Two weeks before the opening of the Summer Olympics in Moscow, she broke her neck in two places in training. She became a quadriplegic for the rest of her life which ended at age 46 in 2006. Elena never had an option.
There has been a dumpster of negative criticism of Simone Biles decision to withdraw from the women’s team competition this past week. Biles withdrew after the first rotation of the vault. Biles is the most accomplished men’s or women’s gymnast in US history. She is a warrior and a fierce competitor. As she rotated through the air in a series of twists and turns, she came to the instance of landing and the look on her face was sheer terror. The trolls on Facebook can say what they do but if you look at the last moments of that vault, Biles' eyes convey her mental state in that moment. The negative outcry about Simone’s exit now is more than unfortunate, it is malicious. Biles was not coerced by her coaches to challenge herself beyond her safety zone. She was there on her own. But seeing the negative outcry on social media and other nudnik pundits, it is apparent the year of pressure incubation for the delayed Olympics was immense.
The female gymnast takes on a far more dangerous set of skills than the male to earn a medal. The women compete on the vault, the uneven bars, and the balance beam besides the floor exercises which the genders share. The men compete on the one bar, the pommel horse, and the two rings. The vault is the riskiest of all apparatus. The female gymnast launches herself from a spring to the vault to lightyears and beyond. They spin, twist, and strive to negotiate a landing and a score. It looks brilliant on my television but never thought about what might be playing in the mind of the contestant. We learned about that on Tuesday night. The “twistys” they are called. The yips in golf are far less dangerous. The larger narrative dragged in the horrors of Larry Naser which are not forgotten in her decision. Biles was ready to play in 2020 as a 23-year-old. With a year of pressure building, the US Gymnastics Olympic Committee’s sanguine response to Naser’s 150-year sentence, Biles was a seething quarantite. None of us are quite right, right now. Let us all give this national treasure the margins she deserves. Hell, it is the Olympics, no one must die.
Which among us has never had moments of doubt and can speak ill of the anxious? And for those of us that stress from time to time, may we pray that it is not in midair in a red unitard.
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