Once the Tokyo Games began, the stress of it all caused her to lose her ability to determine her spatial awareness in the air, a potentially dangerous condition known in gymnastics as the “twisties.”
She withdrew from the team finals and did not compete in the individual all-around competition. Biles said at the time that she was shaking and unable to nap, describing herself as not being in the proper “head space” to continue and concerned with injuring herself. “It just sucks when you are fighting with your own head,” she said.
She remained determined, though, and on the final day of the gymnastics competition in Tokyo, Biles gathered her composure and with a modified routine won a bronze medal on the balance beam. “I wasn’t expecting to walk away with a medal,” she said at the time. “I was just going out there doing this for me.” She added: “To have one more opportunity to be at the Olympics meant the world to me.”
While Biles faced some criticism for withdrawing from several events in Tokyo, she was widely embraced for her candor in discussing her mental health and for acknowledging her vulnerability.
Along with other athletes like the swimmer Michael Phelps, the tennis player Naomi Osaka, the figure skater Gracie Gold and the basketball players DeMar DeRozan and Kevin Love, Biles rejected the long tradition of stoicism in sports and represented a cultural shift in a willingness to publicly speak up about anxiety, depression and pressure.
Sian L. Beilock, then the president of Barnard College in New York (and now the president of Dartmouth), a cognitive scientist who studies athletes, business people and students and why they succumb to pressure, said of Biles during the Tokyo Games: “I applaud the fact she was able to ascertain that she wasn’t in the right state of mind and step back. What a hard thing to do. There was so much pressure to continue. And she was able to find the strength to say, ‘No, this is not right.’”
The willingness of Biles and others to speak out confirmed that mental health issues affect everyone, Beilock said.
Juliet Macur contributed reporting.
