Simone Biles Makes Triumphant Return to Gymnastics: Overcoming Mental Health Challenges for Tokyo Redemption

2023-08-05 17:29:00

(ANSA) – CHICAGO, AUG 5 – The American gymnast Simone Biles, winner of four Olympic golds and 19 world titles, returns to compete after the bad moment she experienced at the Tokyo Games in 2021 and which set off the alarms around the mental health of elite athletes.
The long-awaited return of Biles, 26, will take place at the US Classic in Chicago, which is being held this weekend and the announcement prompted the more than 11,000 available seats to quickly sell out to see her in action again after two years.
“I am moved by the number of messages of support and affection received and excited to compete again,” said the athlete in the preview of the qualifying contest for the national championships that will take place from August 24 to 27 in California.
“We wouldn’t be here if we had any doubts. She wanted to compete and we supported her,” said her coach, Cecile Landi, confirming that Biles managed to leave behind the ghosts that haunted her in her last public appearance at those Tokyo Games.
It was when Yurchenko failed to perform a double jump and suffered a psychological block that prevented her from participating normally in the Olympic event, in which she won a silver medal in the team event and then added bronze on the balance beam.
In this discipline, he repeated what was done at the Rio 2016 Games, where he had a consecration performance by harvesting gold in the team, individual, vault and ground events.
Biles won seven Olympic medals, who also added 25 in World Cups, 19 of which were gold, and who after that bitter experience on Japanese soil is now back in the ring.
As if there were no doubts, the American completed that Yurchenko double jump without difficulty, which awakened old ghosts, as she herself defined them at the time.
“As long as she tells us that she’s ready, we’ll move on,” Landi said about it, explaining that Biles began considering her return to the courts in March and that, after marrying Jonathan Owens, an American football player, in April, she began to take it seriously in May.
“I think that after her marriage there was a change and her desire to compete again began to strengthen,” said the coach, explaining that Biles seemed to recover the sacred fire and today “she can do everything she did before.”
“We have taken advantage of the training just to make her return easier from a physical and mental point of view,” he clarified, explaining that “Simone is now a married woman and has matured. She knows what she wants and we are with her to support her.”
Two years after her last presentation, the public eagerly awaits to see her incomparable exercises again, but above all to see her smile again after the ordeal that she had to go through who was chosen as athlete of the year in 2021 by “Time”.
His cry of warning in Tokyo, where many were waiting for his definitive consecration as the best gymnast in history, served to bring to the table a topic that many tried to hide.
“It’s as if I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders,” Biles said at the time, publicly acknowledging his fragility and opening a debate regarding the pressures suffered by elite athletes.
She managed to name her “demons” and called them “twisties”, a kind of blockage that prevented her from maintaining her sense of direction while performing her jump, which represented a serious danger to her physical and mental health.
Ghosts linked not only to the extreme demand, but also to the difficulties derived from a traumatic childhood due to the addiction of his parents and the abuses suffered when he was a member of the national team, as so many other colleagues suffered at the hands of the condemned doctor of the US national team, Larry Nassar.
Today, Biles is back and many predict that the 2024 Paris Games will be her chance to take revenge for what happened in Tokyo, although the most important thing is undoubtedly that she enjoy what she likes again and, of course, see her smile. again. (ANSA).