Fascination, depression, emancipation.
Tattooed on the left shoulder, “And yet I rise” (Still I Rise, a poem by Maya Angelou).
Rio 16, the child queen, the hyperactive and naive teenager, eyes wide open, and the world, mouth agape, breathless. Four gold medals. Leotards and sequins. Glitter.
Tokyo 21, withdrawal, mental health. The clash with the real world. The expectations. The oppression.
Paris 24. 27 years old. Mature athlete. Married to Jonathan Owens, star of the Chicago Bears football team. Free. Without submission to anyone but herself. “A married woman, a businesswoman, a happy woman,” she says.
The Olympic parable of Simone Biles, the strength with which she was born, and reborn after sinking, nine years into the life of the best gymnast in history, the woman who gave strength and power to elasticity and elegance, the fight for liberation, is also the allegory of the life of all. Biles, black and Texan from the outskirts of Houston, from Spring (fountain, spring, spring) born in Ohio, an alcoholic mother, foster home and finally adopted by her grandparents along with her sister, is the universal queen of sport. She has closed her eyes and opened her mouth, and she has opened the eyes of the whole world to a reality always in the shadow of glitter and medals, which she faced head on and strong. She no longer feels the cameras that surround her as a threat, an inquisition into her hidden thoughts and fears. They are part of the scenery, already inert, indifferent, that follows her wherever she goes, wherever she steps, and in the podium training (the first one in the Arena de Bercy, on the real stage of the Games, the fundamental contact with the materials, the lights, the sound: these are also a show) they are only there for her, who seems so tiny, her 142 centimetres in height in the corridors of the labyrinth of the track, so gigantic on the carpet, that she revolutionizes. “I am a rare example of longevity in gymnastics,” she says in The Team. “I feel my body is aging, but I also feel that I have more control over it. I feel lucky to have lasted so long. To believe in yourself, you have to identify with role models, and I am proud to be able to be an example for other gymnasts.” And Brazilian Rebeca Andrade, the only one who comes close to her in the gymnastics world, echoes her. “She is an incredible athlete, who represents many of us and who makes the eyes of many black girls in Brazil shine, makes them fight, and what she represents for me, I want to be for others,” says Andrade, 25, Olympic champion in high jump in Tokyo, also an example of longevity.
She is in Paris. “Stronger than ever, smarter, more mature, more reliable,” she says.. “And a better athlete than ever. I like gymnastics more than ever.”
“It’s incredible,” reflects Pablo Carriles, a Spanish gymnastics judge in Paris (the one in charge of the men’s pommel horse apparatus). “On a diagonal floor, Biles introduces the Biles II, a double somersault with triple twist that is impossible for any other gymnast, for fear of suffering again.” twistiesthe feeling of loss in the air if there are turns, but more with more difficulty, and very few male gymnasts dare to do it.” The twisties They are the graphic memory of the disaster in Tokyo, of the lowest point. The Yurchenko with a triple piked somersault with which she won the last World Championships, her response two years later. In her return, Biles has not stopped innovating and taking risks, introducing new elements in her best apparatus, floor and vault, and, in Paris, she may even try something new on the parallel bars.
Her journey through life, her voyage, is summed up in just 87 seconds by the choreography of her floor exercise designed by French dancer Grégory Milan. It all starts with Taylor Swift. With the powerful rhythm of …Ready for it? Mixed shortly with the funk of Delresto (Echoes), Travis Scott and Beyoncé. “My least favorite thing about the process is learning a new routine to new music,” Biles said when she debuted it in June to win the U.S. championships with two scores above 15. “But I love Taylor Swift and I love Beyoncé. Those are my girls.”
Between the second and third diagonals, Biles expresses herself almost like a jazz, hip hop dancer, in the corner, and at a certain moment, she stands up, and with such speed that you have to be very attentive so that it does not go unnoticed, she gives three quick punches in the air with her right fist closed. These are the Revelations Alvin Ailey, the choreographer who revolutionized dance in the 1960s by giving the stage to black American dancers. “Biles symbolically breaks the cage in which she has been locked, she frees herself,” she explains in the New York Times, Milan, the choreographer who dramatically includes the blows as a key moment in the narrative of the gymnast’s life, said: “She will no longer allow anything or anyone to hurt her.”
Then she falls, gets up and flies. It is the third diagonal. Symbolically, she completes it with the Biles I, a double back somersault with a half turn, the first original movement to which she gave her name. It was then, 2013, the 16-year-old girl who was taking medication for hyperactivity and amazed at the World Championships in Antwerp. She won the all-around competition. It was the beginning of everything. “That’s when I started to believe in myself and in my gymnastics,” she says. “And I continued training more and more.”
Bubbly and extroverted, a champagne cork on the back, Biles, who trains with Aimee Boorman, is not just another person, she is the best, but she is not the leader. She does not speak for anyone then. Not even for herself, perhaps. She does not leave her role as a wonderful athlete who three years later, in Rio, won team gold in the all-around, on vault and on floor, conquered the front pages of all the media in the world and boosted NBC’s audience to levels never seen before. Nothing seems impossible for her. Not on the carpet, not flying on the vault or on the uneven bars. Not in life either.
After a sabbatical year, during which nothing is forbidden, and she enjoys it, she returns. US women’s gymnastics is then experiencing its most turbulent years. What is hidden comes to light: the decades-long sexual abuse of hundreds of child gymnasts by the team doctor, Larry Nassar. Protection falls. The gymnasts are freed from the weight of secrecy. They speak without fear. They empower themselves. Biles, who began training in Spring in 2019 with the French couple Cécile and Laurent Landi, is not yet among them. Tokyo calls. The pandemic gets in the way.
The Games are delayed for a year, which is already beginning to weigh on her mind, and they take place in an oppressive atmosphere of confinement, without communication, team games, joy and celebration in the Olympic Village. They are the silent Games. The world was paralyzed, the athletes continued running. Years later, when talking about mental health is not a taboo but a moral obligation, a step further on the road to emancipation, Biles confesses that even before arriving in the Japanese capital she had a premonition, depressive thoughts. Despite her greatness, despite being the perfect gymnast, she gets overwhelmed. No one doubts that she will win everything. She has no right to make any mistakes. She accepts it and suffers an identity crisis. “I thought, how did I get to this? Is this what I wanted?” she explains in several interviews. The doubt, the lack of an answer, hits her when she flies in the vault in the first rotation of the team final. In the air she decides to stop. She withdraws from the competition. “I just wanted to run away, get out of the gym, get lost, think only about myself,” she says. “But I knew I would recover.” She only returns, still not fully recovered, to win a bronze medal on the balance beam.
The mental balance she seeks, the one that worries her, she finds it by talking, by getting out of herself. She talks about mental health. “Being able to feel vulnerable in front of everyone was a great risk for me,” but it was a victory,” she says. In September 2021, she testifies in the trial that condemns Larry Nassar. “I have also been a victim,” she proclaims. Inside, however, she continues to think that she cannot continue. She wants to retire. Mental therapy triumphs. Biles begins to come to the gym to chat, to laugh with her teammates. Sometimes she puts on her leotards and does some exercises. Jumps. Pounces. No one forces her. The coaches laugh with her. No one pressures her. She has found balance. Gymnastics is no longer everything and that is why she can give her everything. There is also the family. The dog. Life. Without rushing, with patience, she returns to gymnastics for good. At the World Championships in Antwerp, last autumn, the same Flemish city 10 years after her revelation, is reborn. As usual. Four gold medals. Team, all-around, floor. Balance. The numbers, 30 world medals (23 gold), more than anyone else; seven Olympic medals (four gold), are nothing anymore. She flies, free, above everything.
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