Sports is not strictly about wins and losses. It’s the tales that come in between the victories and defeats, the stories of redemption and perseverance that tell the full story.
We spent a full week arguing over whether Simone Biles was either a coward or a hero, but it’s her comeback story — and the battles she’s fighting — that should be the focus.
On Tuesday evening in Tokyo, Biles returned to competition — after withdrawing from the women’s team finals and not participating in four consecutive individual events — and gave us a reminder of why sports can be so impactful.
Biles hopped on the balance beam and battled through whatever she was fighting, managing to win a bronze medal when she clearly was not at her best.
“It means more than all the golds because I’ve pushed through so much the last five years and the last week while I’ve even been here. It was very emotional, and I’m just proud of myself and just all of these girls, as well,” Biles said.
Biles has had a hellacious week. After taking herself out of the women’s team competition last Tuesday, we started in on her. It was an easy topic for the media and sports fans alike to jump on. We all went to our corners and duked it out.
Everything must be one extreme or another. There is never a middle ground, a second to step back and think about the varying ways of approaching a sensitive subject. Biles is a 24-year-old international star who was lauded as the greatest thing to happen to gymnastics since the sport’s invention. She wasn’t just competing for five gold medals in Tokyo, she was expected to dominate on her way to five golds.
Do you understand the pressure? I’ll answer for you — you don’t, and neither do I.
It clearly became too much for her last Tuesday. Did she handle it correctly directly after withdrawing from the team competition? Probably not, but at the same time, would any of us if we were in the same situation?
She made it all about herself, saying the catch-phrases that we’ve grown to see as “trigger” words.
“I just need to let the girls do it and focus on myself.”
“You want to do it for yourself.”
“I have to focus on my mental health.”
We should have cut her some slack after the competition in which she embarrassingly had to withdraw due to the fact that she was unable to complete gymnastics moves that she performs on a daily basis. There is no way she was in the right frame of mind to answer the questions honestly and accurately, not to mention there’s a decent chance she has people around her giving her advice on which words to use.
But we didn’t. Some pounced on an opportunity to take her down, taking the cheap and easy way out by calling her a coward and a quitter.
Those who did refused to take a step back and think about what she has gone through in her life.
Former gymnast Andrea Orris shined a light on what Biles was going through in a message on social media.
“It makes me so frustrated to see comments about Simone not being mentally tough enough or quitting on her team,” the message states.
“We are talking about the same girl who was molested by her team doctor throughout her entire childhood and teen years, won the world all-around championship title while passing a kidney stone, put her body through an extra year of training through the pandemic, added so much difficulty to her routines that the judges literally do not know how to properly rate her skills bc they are so ahead of her time,” the statement continues.
After her bronze medal on the balance beam, Biles told reporters that she was also dealing with the sudden death of her aunt.
“At the end of the day, people don’t understand what we are going through,” Biles said, via Olympics.com. “Two days ago, I woke up and my aunt unexpectedly passed, and it wasn’t any easier being here at the Olympic Games.”
And then there’s the other side of the aisle.
The side that labeled Biles as a “hero” for withdrawing from the competition. You know you’re in a strange time when a superior athlete having to give up on her dreams is labeled heroic. It wasn’t “true strength” to pull out of the competition. It was painful to watch.
The endless articles on how Biles and tennis star Naomi Osaka are “role models” for “prioritizing their mental health” were ludicrous.
The appropriate take was that it was okay for Biles to withdraw from the competition. She has proven herself at the highest possible level time and time again. If she was worried about hurting herself as she experienced the “twisties,” who are we to tell her she must risk her physical health in order to prove to us that she’s a “team player?”
It was also appropriate to say that in no way should she be labeled as a hero for stepping away for a period of time. She did let down her teammates after all. In team sports, it’s not just about you. You’re simply one cog in the machine.
It was disappointing and sad to see her struggle, but also phenomenal to watch her battle back and return to competing.
I hope we’ve all learned something from the Biles saga. Sometimes, situations can’t be seen simply through one lens. We have to take a step back and have empathy for what an individual is going through, even when we have no ability to understand.
I’m proud of Biles. I hope to see her again in future Olympic Games. If I don’t, at least I’ll remember her as going out fighting. Clearly not at the top of her game, but battling through the negativity and fake praise to simply compete.
Joe Morgan is the Sports Reporter for The Daily Wire. Most recently, Morgan covered the Clippers, Lakers, and the NBA for Sporting News. Send your sports questions to [email protected].
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.