The gymnast didn’t have to retake the beam to uplift her gender, empower survivors or to be that ridiculous phrase, ‘a credit to her race’
She could have booked a flight back home to Texas and drawn the shades or slipped off to some island resort much farther afield – you know, the kind of place where Melinda Gates hunkers down before the divorce filing hits the news.
But in the week since withdrawing from the Olympic gymnastics team final to protect her physical and mental health – a brave decision made against the backdrop of unhinged takes from people who couldn’t attempt a cartwheel – the transcendent Simone Biles didn’t just tarry at the Tokyo Games. She hung around the Ariake Gymnastics Centre to cheer on her USA teammates. She hopped on Instagram to break down the “twisties,” that out-of-body experience that suddenly made her feel so lost while spinning in the air and so fearful of landing back firmly on her feet. “For anyone saying I quit,” Biles wrote. ”I didn’t quit.”
Related: ‘I did it for me’: Simone Biles returns to Olympics to win bronze on beam
