When The Best Isn’t
August 3, 2021 at 11:51 p.m.
When The Best Isn’t
By Roger Grossman-
The last part of that last sentence gets your attention if you know me well, but I could not admit that the title of “greatest ever” could have been anyone but Mary Lou Retton. Mary Lou, Depuy hips and all, is still number two.
But something strange happened on the way to the crowning of the queen of the mat.
Actually, what happened was unthinkable and impossible and beyond our scope of understanding.
Simone Biles cracked.
By her own admission, the pressure of this competition got to her. It caused her to doubt the skills and athleticism that had put so much hardware around her neck.
And we all saw it happen right before our very eyes.
In the team competition, she raced down the runway, pounded her feet into the spring-loaded launching pad and flew up into low-level orbit as we had watched her do so often. She started the twisting and contorting that is her forte.
But at the peak of her assension, her body just stopped. No more twisting. No more contorting.
Something was wrong—very, very wrong.
Immediately I thought to myself “oh no, she pulled something!”
My next thought was “please don’t fall on your head…please don’t fall on your head.”
Her face was one of resolve as she walked down the steps to the US bench.
She wasn’t limping. She showed no obvious pain. She, just walked over and talked to the trainer and left the arena.
“OK, she tweaked something in mid-jump. She’ll be fine,” I reasoned.
What we would come to learn, from her, is that she was injured before she took the first step down the runway of the vault. It was not an ankle or a knee or anything of that sort.
It was her mind that was hurting.
She admitted that, with her body in mid-twist 10 feet above the blue mat and beginning its gravity-required descent, her mind blanked out. She didn’t know where she was and she wasn’t sure what to do next.
Her brain kicked into survival mode and she righted herself in relation to the mat and landed unharmed.
So she said “that’s it, I need to stop until I can get refocused again.”
Upon that revelation, she began to get crushed by some in the media—social media to be specific.
It should be pointed out at this point that most of those who spoke the most harshly—the ones who called her a “quitter” and “soft” and “weak”—are not sports journalists. They are political columnists, leaning heavily to “the right”.
It should also be pointed out that most of those people have never competed in athletics, and have no concept of what they are talking about when they comment on sports.
Biles had to endure the sexual abuse of Dr. Larry Nassar, his very public trial and her very public testimony in it.
And something happened to her in Tokyo that triggered those memories and emotions and set up camp inside her head. Yes, at the worst possible time.
So what do we do with this?
These games were supposed to be her coronation. The marketing by NBC and several corporate sponsors made her the focus of these games, and she earned that.
I can’t make the decision for you, but can I suggest that you aren’t her and neither am I. As much as you and I may want to, we cannot possibly put ourselves in the shoes of a 24-year old black woman in an almost exclusively white-person’s sport who is the face of not only her sport but this entire Olympic games but who was abused multiple times by a person closely-associated with her sport.
That’s really, really heavy.
Can I suggest we feel bad for her? Can I suggest we praise her teammates all the more for still earning a collective silver medal without her? Can I suggest we get out of this girl’s head?
She’s clearly got enough going on already in there without the rest of us fighting for space.
The last part of that last sentence gets your attention if you know me well, but I could not admit that the title of “greatest ever” could have been anyone but Mary Lou Retton. Mary Lou, Depuy hips and all, is still number two.
But something strange happened on the way to the crowning of the queen of the mat.
Actually, what happened was unthinkable and impossible and beyond our scope of understanding.
Simone Biles cracked.
By her own admission, the pressure of this competition got to her. It caused her to doubt the skills and athleticism that had put so much hardware around her neck.
And we all saw it happen right before our very eyes.
In the team competition, she raced down the runway, pounded her feet into the spring-loaded launching pad and flew up into low-level orbit as we had watched her do so often. She started the twisting and contorting that is her forte.
But at the peak of her assension, her body just stopped. No more twisting. No more contorting.
Something was wrong—very, very wrong.
Immediately I thought to myself “oh no, she pulled something!”
My next thought was “please don’t fall on your head…please don’t fall on your head.”
Her face was one of resolve as she walked down the steps to the US bench.
She wasn’t limping. She showed no obvious pain. She, just walked over and talked to the trainer and left the arena.
“OK, she tweaked something in mid-jump. She’ll be fine,” I reasoned.
What we would come to learn, from her, is that she was injured before she took the first step down the runway of the vault. It was not an ankle or a knee or anything of that sort.
It was her mind that was hurting.
She admitted that, with her body in mid-twist 10 feet above the blue mat and beginning its gravity-required descent, her mind blanked out. She didn’t know where she was and she wasn’t sure what to do next.
Her brain kicked into survival mode and she righted herself in relation to the mat and landed unharmed.
So she said “that’s it, I need to stop until I can get refocused again.”
Upon that revelation, she began to get crushed by some in the media—social media to be specific.
It should be pointed out at this point that most of those who spoke the most harshly—the ones who called her a “quitter” and “soft” and “weak”—are not sports journalists. They are political columnists, leaning heavily to “the right”.
It should also be pointed out that most of those people have never competed in athletics, and have no concept of what they are talking about when they comment on sports.
Biles had to endure the sexual abuse of Dr. Larry Nassar, his very public trial and her very public testimony in it.
And something happened to her in Tokyo that triggered those memories and emotions and set up camp inside her head. Yes, at the worst possible time.
So what do we do with this?
These games were supposed to be her coronation. The marketing by NBC and several corporate sponsors made her the focus of these games, and she earned that.
I can’t make the decision for you, but can I suggest that you aren’t her and neither am I. As much as you and I may want to, we cannot possibly put ourselves in the shoes of a 24-year old black woman in an almost exclusively white-person’s sport who is the face of not only her sport but this entire Olympic games but who was abused multiple times by a person closely-associated with her sport.
That’s really, really heavy.
Can I suggest we feel bad for her? Can I suggest we praise her teammates all the more for still earning a collective silver medal without her? Can I suggest we get out of this girl’s head?
She’s clearly got enough going on already in there without the rest of us fighting for space.
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