Simone Biles’ Olympics comeback is epic even without gold

By Mary McNamaraCulture Columnist and Critic

July 25, 2024 3 AM PT

Simone Biles has already won the 2024 Summer Olympic Games.

Which isn’t to say we’re not waiting breathlessly to see her in action. Gymnastics is always one of the most popular events of the Summer Olympics and Biles is the world’s most decorated gymnast. Millions (including me) are counting down the days and rearranging their schedules to watch live as Biles competes in the events she has dominated for so long. She is probably the Games’ single biggest attraction — and if her performances in pre-Olympic competition are any indication, it will be quite a show.

But even if she doesn’t leave Paris with a neck weighted down by gold, she’ll still have won — I was about to write “simply by being there,” but that isn’t quite right. Because she isn’t just “there.” She’s there at a time when women’s athletics are being taken more seriously than ever, and the world is grappling with what that means, what it looks like. And she’s been a central player in the sea change.

Of course, women in all sports continue to fight for equal pay. And recent controversies over how Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese have been treated on the court and in the press — Is Clark being bullied by more seasoned WNBA players? Does Reese’s embrace of trash-talking make her less of a role model? — underline the different standards facing top female athletes, particularly those of color, compared with their male counterparts.

Even so, many women are rejecting the silent stoicism that sports has long, and perilously, equated with greatness. They have become increasingly transparent about the mental and physical realities of elite athletics. Serena Williams has spoken openly about the impact childbirth and motherhood had on her career; Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French Open in 2021, citing mental health issues; Olympic champion skier Lindsey Vonn has spoken openly about her struggles with depression. Olympic marathoner Lonah Chemtai Salpeter and alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin made news when they spoke of how their menstrual cycles affect their energy levels.

Biles is, in many ways, the embodiment of those changes. She enters these Olympics as the hero of the type of comeback story that we love to weep and cheer over. But in recent interviews and with her new documentary series, “Simone Biles Rising,” she has made clear she is interested more in promoting awareness of the mental and physical work that goes into becoming a top athlete than in eliciting the standard thrill of victory/agony of defeat.

Not that she hasn’t known both. Three years ago, Biles entered the Summer Games in Tokyo as the GOAT, favored to bring home all, or most, of the gold in gymnastics. Instead, she was hit with “the twisties,” a term gymnasts use for the sudden and inexplicable inability to keep track of their bodies as they move, swiftly and dangerously, through space. As a result, Biles withdrew from most of her events — though she won a bronze on the balance beam and was part of the U.S. team’s silver medal.

Her decision was supported by some, who considered it a brave and positive step for mental health advocacy, and excoriated by others, who accused Biles of letting her team down and relinquishing her place at the top of the sport.

Biles retreated from gymnastics and got into therapy. Among the many pressures she faced were the dual traumas of having been abused by U.S. national team doctor Larry Nassar and then becoming a standard-bearer for the case against him. Slowly, with the support of her husband, Chicago Bears backup safety Jonathan Owens, her family and her coaches, she began to consider another run at the Olympics.

I know this, just as I know that she shoved all the mementos of those days in Tokyo into what she calls her forbidden closet, because she documented it in “Simone Biles Rising,” a four-part Netflix docuseries directed by Katie Walsh that is courageous enough to begin before its ending is known. The first two episodes premiered earlier this month; the final two will presumably cover what happens in Paris, for good or ill.

The pre-Olympics episodes are a remarkably clear-eyed attempt by Biles and others to explain what happened in Tokyo, what her life was like after, how she moved forward and what she hopes will happen next as she decides to try to compete in the Paris Olympics and begins the training that will require. The next two, well, who knows?

It is an extraordinary thing to do, record one’s comeback without knowing how it will end. But then, Biles is nothing if not extraordinary.

Few of us will ever experience anything remotely like the high-pressure, high-profile moment when Biles withdrew from the 2020 competitions. But there is universal resonance in her subsequent willingness to dispassionately assess the reality of the situation — it wasn’t just a bad week or an isolated glitch — to allow herself options, including retirement, and then essentially go back to the beginning to rebuild her career.

Which appears to have been her intent. She understands there is value in doing the work whether it leads to Olympic gold or a healthier life. The end doesn’t need to justify the means; the means are where the real gold lies.

Traditionally, comeback stories are supposed to end with, you know, a comeback, the kind that would involve Biles standing on a podium as thousands cheer. And this could very well happen. As she has shown in multiple competitions leading up the Olympics, she remains capable of feats that few, if any, of her peers can match. And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I want Biles to shove a few gold medals in the face of all those sportscasters and pundits who called her weak, or selfish, or less than a champion for acknowledging her limitations in a time of crisis.

But who knows?

As she does when she approaches the vault, the bar or the mat, Biles is launching her whole self into the void with no guarantee of the results.

Except that, whatever comes next, she has shown us, once again, what victory looks like.