PARIS — Manila Esposito, the bronze medalist on the balance beam, stared like a deer in the headlights in a packed post-meet press conference. As she started to speak, her voice barely audible, Simone Biles reached over and adjusted Esposito’s microphone, nodding at the Italian gymnast that she was good to go. Later, after the moderator posed a question to Alice D’Amato, Esposito’s teammate, it took D’Amato a moment to respond. The moderator started to prompt her, when Biles gently reminded the moderator that the translation into the earpieces takes a little time to process.
Every now and again there comes a reminder: Simone Biles is 27 years old. This is not her first rodeo. She knows a thing or two about microphones and translations, succeeding and even a little bit about failing. Biles started competing internationally more than a decade ago, as a braces-wearing 16-year-old. She wasn’t old enough to drive. She wasn’t old enough to drink when she went to Rio in 2016.
Now she’s married but, like a new bride who is asked when she wants to start a family upon exiting the ceremony, Biles has been asked, even before she finished competition in Paris, how she feels about Los Angeles. She initially answered with a nonanswer. It would be lovely to compete on her home turf, she admitted, but she also acknowledged that age is not merely a number. “I’m old,” she said with a laugh.
Later she expressed her exasperation on X. “You guys really gotta stop asking athletes what’s next after they win a medal at the Olympics,” she tweeted, adding, “Let us soak up the moment we’ve worked our whole lives for.”
It is the crux of it, really, but in Biles’ case, it’s messaging that needs to be flipped. It is everyone else that needs to do the appreciating, instead of greedily wondering if we might get to enjoy more. This is what happens, of course. We get spoiled, and then desperate, desperate to not let go of a thing we probably took for granted. Biles is a constant, a near-sure thing in sports. Neither age nor injury, abuse or mental health demons, have defeated her. She comes back every time, and so we are left to fret: What if this is it?
It very well could be. Her coach, Cecile Landi, is leaving to become the head coach at the University of Georgia. Her husband and Biles’ co-coach, Laurent, will follow in a year’s time after their daughter graduates from college. It seems like the ideal transition. She has nothing left to prove, but then again, that’s the tease. This stopped being about proving anything three years ago.
Then, done in by the twisties in Tokyo, Biles did the painful digging to excavate the root of her mental-health struggles. She admitted to abuse at the hands of Larry Nassar and courageously questioned USA Gymnastics’ role in it before the Senate Judiciary Committee. She questioned her own “why,” a scary proposition for all of us, confronting really what we want and what we’re all about. She then had the courage to admit she’d lost her direction, that she’d exchanged her love for gymnastics for answering a bell. More courageously, Biles went and fixed it, taking a year off from a sport in which time is already unforgiving.
“To do the work, the personal work to be here and to perform, it’s amazing,” Laurent Landi said. “It just shows how tough the mind is, and that if you heal it properly, you can be very, very successful.”
She is hardly fading. Biles spent the entire week here dealing with a nagging calf injury, originally injured before trials and tweaked here, during qualifications. Doctors wrapped her leg for the entirety of the competition, and while Biles downplayed the seriousness of it — “Y’all are nosy,” she jokingly chastised reporters when asked — Landi admitted it’s been a matter of managing the pain, not eliminating it. Medication, treatment, ice, the usual lineup, all to ensure that it “held up,” much different than healed. “It was bothering her, of course,” he said. “Was it impacting her performances? I don’t think so.”
Landi smirked then, as if to say, “You tell me.” Four medals, three of them gold, more than all but 22 countries competing in Paris to date.
The final day, of course, was meant to be a coronation, a victory lap and an au revoir. Instead it revealed Biles’ humanity. She was tired. She’s competed in four of the five days possible here. And she was mentally drained. The pursuit of righting the Tokyo ship weighed heavily on her. The event finals felt weird, too. Instead of playing music while the gymnasts performed, Bercy Arena turned into a church, complete with would-be church ladies tsk-tsking people who dared to react when the gymnasts nailed a skill on beam.
“We asked several times if we could have some music or background noise,” Biles said. “So I’m not really sure what happened there.”
These are not excuses; they are realities. The beam turned into the Hunger Games, medals awarded to those who didn’t fall off. Three women, including Sunisa Lee, fell before Biles and two others had serious balance checks. Yet when Biles missed a landing on her back layout step out and fell, the arena gasped. Later, after the competition ended and Biles officially failed to medal, a mom in line at the Bercy Arena concessions stand bemoaned to her young daughter, “I feel so bad for Simone.” Her daughter, eyes wide, replied, “She fell,” as if she’d just watched DaVinci paint outside of the lines or Beethoven miss a chord.
Whatever Simone Biles decides to do next, her legacy will be one of gymnastics excellence and, more importantly, leadership and courage off the mat. (Naomi Baker / Getty Images)
In her defense, the girl couldn’t have been any older than 8, and in her lifetime, Biles has been Olympic perfection. Until this beam final, Biles had competed in nine different Olympic events in her career, including team, all-around and event finals. She’d medaled in each and every one, earning gold in seven.
Then her very humanity had the audacity to strike again. Two hours after her beam foible, Biles returned for the floor exercise, an event she’s never lost in either the Olympics or worlds. She landed awkwardly during warmups, appearing to tweak that same calf injury. Tended to briefly, Biles nonetheless went out and landed her first tumbling pass, restoring order to the universe. But on the second and the fourth, Biles twice stepped out of bounds, costing her precious tenths of a point, just enough to slot her second to Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade.
It should be noted — she messed up two moves named after her, that no one else even tries. This is Biles’ definition of failure.
Her definition of success? If you ask Biles, it’s not in the medals, her power. It’s in the very thing that showed itself on the last day of competition: her realness. She is proud of what she’s accomplished, but she’s more proud of who she’s become and the people she believes — accurately — she’s helped.
“Putting your mental health first, and taking time for yourself, whether you’re in sports or not, it’s about longevity,” she said. “Longevity in sports, specifically, but also just for a better, healthier lifestyle.”
Not far from where Biles competed, a woman walked down a Parisian sidewalk, following behind her friendly Australian shetland sheepdog. Indulging dog lovers in need of a fix, she stopped to chat. She is French, but in Paris to enjoy the Olympics and upon learning her new dog friends were from the U.S. said immediately how much she enjoyed the “American gymnast.” She had watched Biles’ documentary on Netflix and commended her for opening the dialogue on mental health.
“I am not an athlete,” she said, adding that she was nonetheless grateful that Biles made it OK to “talk about” your personal struggles. “I appreciate that.”
If this is the end, we should all appreciate Simone Biles.
(Top photo of Simone Biles with her gold medal from the vault competition: Tom Weller / VOIGT / GettyImages)
