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It wasn’t Simone Biles becoming the first woman ever to land the hardest vault in history at an Olympic Games that cemented her status as one of the most celebrated gymnasts of all time. Nor was it her dazzling audiences while making history in custom diamanté Ralph Lauren, nor the fact that she did all of this while also nursing a serious calf injury as she performed on Saturday as part of the 2024 Paris Olympics. No, what affirmed Biles’ star status is her doing all of this against the backdrop of fluctuating mental health.
For the uninitiated, Biles made her dominant debut at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, in which she won four gold medals, before entering the 2020 Tokyo Olympics not only as a favourite to replicate those feats, but as one of the Games’ most famous faces. But during the Tokyo Games, as her body twirled and twisted through the air in a vault, it seemed as though some part of Biles was lost. Suffering from what is referred to as the ‘twisties’ during her time in the air – a psychological phenomenon in the sport when a gymnast experiences a disconnect between their body and mind while performing a skill, like the twists – she eventually withdrew from the team finals, citing her mental health as the reason, and had a two-year break from the sport.
