Simone Biles was supposed to perform a vault with two-and-a-half twists at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. She usually gets about 10 feet in the air at 150 revolutions per minute and lands with the force of over three times her body weight.
During the team final, Biles landed after one-and-a-half twists and stumbled down the mat, far from the marked centre line. She exited the competition soon after.
Biles cited mental health struggles as the reason behind her exit from competition. She explained her botched vault as a case of the “twisties” – when gymnasts lose air awareness during twisting exercises.
If Biles had physically injured herself, she likely would’ve been able to skip all interviews and appearances. But because her injury wasn’t visible, she still participated in media availabilities and interviews later that day and throughout the rest of the competition.
It’s unfair to athletes to force them to participate in media interviews, regardless of their type of injury. Yet, fans still expressed disappointment at her withdrawal. Others said she used mental health issues as an excuse for poor performance.
Beyond dealing with the stress of training for an Olympics and living up to the title of the greatest gymnast of all time, Biles was also dealing with a highly publicized sexual assault case against a former Team USA doctor when she withdrew from Tokyo 2020.
At its core, the Olympics are about creating a better society, relationship-building, and fair competition. But the constant stream of content from social media, broadcast television, and news sources have taken the virtuous mission of sport and turned it into a panopticon for highly gifted teenagers.
Athletes, sometimes as young as 14 or 15, are flooded with social media DMs and interview requests to deliver more content to greedy fans who masquerade their online abuse of teenagers as pride for their country.
Media availabilities often start less than an hour after a sporting event finishes – just enough time for athletes to make themselves look presentable for the cameras. Not enough time to process the loss they may have just endured, especially during the Olympics.
When a professional athlete is physically injured, their recovery is kept under wraps and details are only released when and where the team chooses to share them. But when Biles, or any other athlete, exits because of their mental health, they still must climb onto a stage, sit in front of a microphone, and process their performance in real time for millions of viewers.
Similar to physical injuries, the stress athletes endure while training and competing is a direct cause of mental health issues. According to a University of Toronto study, elite athletes develop mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, or eating disorders at a much higher rate than the general public due to the stress and pressure they face, especially when training for the Olympics. And forcing athletes to dissect those issues in front of an audience before they can process them privately is inhumane.
Athletes deserve to process their wins and losses at their own pace, away from lights, cameras, and microphones. They deserve control over what parts of their lives are available for public consumption. They must be taken off the pedestal society has placed them on and allowed to be human once again.
As Simone Biles got the “twisties” mid-vault, she had to make split-second decisions that, if wrong, could have severely injured or killed her. Luckily, there was a foam mat laid out to break her fall and protect her if she landed improperly.
Forcing athletes to navigate their mental health struggles, illnesses, and injuries in front of a global audience and without proper supports is like taking the mat out from under Simone Biles’ feet.