Tuesday night, Simone Biles shocked the world when she decided to step down from competing in the team gymnastics finals at the Olympics. After a botched vault, she realized that she was not mentally where she needed to be to continue the competition. After a brief break behind the scenes, where she likely consulted with her coach and team doctors, she came back out and announced to her teammates that she would be sitting out the rest of the competition. She then threw on her warmups and enthusiastically cheered her teammates on to a silver-medal winning finish.
Since that day, many people have commented on what happened. While most I've seen have been supportive, there are some people who have been very critical. Most have called her selfish, but there are a few who have gone beyond that to label her sociopathic and un-American. No matter what form the criticism has taken, it all seems to be focusing on the wrong thing. They're mad because they believe that her withdrawal is the reason we won silver instead of gold, and they feel like she let her country down as a result. This line of thinking ignores a couple of things about the situation.
The first is the vault that she did before withdrawing. I know little about gymnastics, but even I could tell that something wasn't right about the result. When she landed, she came close to completely sitting down on her knees, and bounced up to a wide stance to regain her balance. Even before hearing comments from other gymnasts, I could tell that it was a miracle that she hadn't been injured. Then I saw this video where Laurie Hernandez explains the problem Biles was having, and it confirmed my suspicions that something had gone seriously wrong. Continued competition likely wouldn't have ended well, as happened with Elena Mukhina in 1980 and Julissa Gomez in 1988.
The second is the assumption that we would have won gold had Biles stayed in the competition. As Alexandra Desanctis states so well in this article, "Her choice not to compete might've dealt a blow to the overall score -- but only if we assume that she would've gone on to perform as the incredible, flawless Simone Biles we've all come to expect." How the vault played out and her own admission of how she was feeling make this scenario quite unlikely. We won silver after she stepped down, but we might not have medaled at all had she continued performing at less than her best, and she easily could have become injured as well.
One criticism I saw was that Biles had the luxury of stepping aside because she wasn't in the right place mentally, where most of us need to push through our anxiety in order to make a living. I disagree. I feel that we are actually the ones who have the luxury of being able to press past our mental issues without too many repercussions. When I go to work on a day that I am feeling anxious, the worst that can happen is that I'm grumpy or unfocused. Had Biles persisted despite her disorientation, the results could have been disastrous.
Another criticism was that Biles should have known ahead of time that she would have this problem so that someone else could have had a chance to qualify. Oh, how I wish mental health would work like that. I can be fine one minute and panicking the next, but these people expected Biles to know a month in advance that she would get the "twisties", which just isn't a practical expectation. She wanted to compete, she worked hard to be able to compete, but when it came time, she couldn't do it. (For a more detailed explanation of the "twisties", see this post.)
As of this writing, Biles has also stepped down from the individual all-around, vault, uneven bars, and floor competitions, but she plans to compete in tomorrow night's balance beam finals. While her decision has brought scrutiny and meant only one chance for an individual medal, there has been some good that came of it. As I mentioned before, her choice to step away rather than continuing to perform far below her capabilities allowed the team to take silver. Suni Lee was able to earn her first two Olympic medals with a gold in the all-around and bronze in the uneven bars. MyKayla Skinner went from planning her flight home to winning silver in the vault finals within 48 hours. And just today, Jade Carey tumbled her way across the floor to a gold-medal winning finish. While I missed getting to see Biles compete in these events, her withdrawal allowed her teammates to shine, and more importantly, kept her safe from injury.
When most of us think of strength, we think it means pushing past our difficulties, but that isn't always the case. Sometimes strength means knowing our limitations and allowing others to help us or step in and take our place. Simone Biles displayed this kind of strength Tuesday night, and I applaud her for that. Her health and safety are much more important than any gold medal.
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