Simone Biles deserved to retire long ago. In a cover story for The Cut published Monday, Biles opened up about her decision to withdraw from Olympic competition in a cover story for The Cut, an unexpected move that sent shockwaves throughout the sports world. Most important, the story shows a direct link between her decision to quit gymnastics and the trauma she went through because of Larry Nassar, who used to work for USA Gymnastics.
«If you look at all I’ve been through in the last seven years, I should never have made another Olympic squad,» Biles told the magazine. «I should have quit much sooner than Tokyo, when Larry Nassar was in the media for two years.» » It was excessive. But I wasn’t about to give up something I’d worked for since I was six years old. I wasn’t going to let him take away my delight. So I pushed through it for as long as my mind and body would allow. »
The «twisties,» which make a gymnast lose all sense of space and put them in serious danger, were the final straw for Biles’ mind and body early on in the Tokyo Games.
«Say you have perfect vision till you’re 30 years old. «You wake up one morning, you can’t see shit, but people encourage you to carry on and perform your everyday work as if you still have your eyesight,» Biles adds in the interview, largely in response to critics who accused her of just giving up at the Games. «Wouldn’t you be confused?»
Moving forward, Biles’s greatest battle will be not as an athlete but as a human—not with a physical sensation but with the awful aftermath of being an abuse survivor. «This will most likely be something I work on for the next 20 years,» she predicted. Regardless of how hard I try to forget. It’s still in the works. » (Last week, Biles gave emotional evidence during a Senate hearing on Nassar’s crimes.) These astonishingly daring insights reframe her decision to pull back, as well as our culture’s narrow expectations of famous athletes.
While there has been widespread support for Biles’ decision to prioritize her physical and emotional health over medals, there has also been criticism of the typical mantra for athletes to grit their teeth and push through, sacrificing everything for the sake of winning. In retrospect, that culture obscured not only the consideration of the harrowing trauma Biles continues to endure but also the fact that she was burying it all to bring glory to USA Gymnastics, the very organization that failed to protect their star athlete from child sexual abuse on multiple occasions.
According to the report, Biles is set to tour with Team USA but is «no longer training.» For the time being, her primary concern appears to be her own well-being. It’s the very least she deserves—and the very least we should want of her.