I am not pitting Simone Biles herself because I don’t know what is going on but I wish all these commentators would stop saying how wonderful she was to cheer her team on.
Now given that she says it wasn’t a physical injury but a mental problem, the best case scenario is that she had a mental breakdown causing her to bail on her team. If she had such a severe mental breakdown, then why is she on the sidelines cheering on her team? Why is she not getting help?
However, the worst case scenario is that she wanted to save her energy for the all around and the individual events. In that case, she really did dump on her team who were expecting her to do some of the routines. Since only three compete on each apparatus, her teammates had to step up and do routines they were not planning to do in order to compete. Go ahead and praise the teammates but don’t praise the one who couldn’t hack it. Olympic athletics is a mental game as well as a physical one and you can’t call someone the GOAT if they can’t handle the mental portion.
Again, not going to say that she didn’t have a true mental health issue but I do feel bad for the other team members who didn’t get to be part of the team competition because she had one of the slots. She gets her medal anyway.
If she now comes back for the individual portion of the competition I don’t want to hear one commentator saying how brave and strong she is.
It’s not brave or strong to do the individual events but let your team down. I am waiting to see how this all shakes out.
Overall, though, is the pressure getting that much more intense or is this generation just not as mentally strong?
I’ll also add a pitting for only making skateboarders under 18 wear helmets. It sets a terrible example. They fall on at least half their runs and when they fall it’s on concrete. Get them some adequate protective gear. I’ll also add a pitting for banning parents of children competing. A 13 year old should not be off competing in a foreign country without the ability to have a parent there, particularly given how much potential abuse there is.
Finally, the usual pitting for the US coverage being so US centric. We barely see anything where a US athlete didn’t win a medal unless they were heavily favored to win and it was a stunning upset.
My favorite part of the Olympics is seeing all the athletes from different countries competing and winning. I don’t watch just to see US athletes win medals. I want to see the best of the best compete no matter where they are from.
I’ve not watched much of the Olympic coverage so far, but from what little I have seen, it seems as though NBC is trying to be a bit less Americanocentric; last night, they showed the end of the triathlon, where a Bermudian woman won that nation’s first ever Olympic gold. I’ve also seen a beach volleyball match between a German and Swiss team (although NBC might assume women’s beach volleyball is a draw for reasons that have nothing to do with nationalism…), and the other night saw a handball match between Denmark and Japan; the US doesn’t even have a team in the handball tournament.
Agree with you about the skateboarders, though – I was cringing at seeing those wiping out into bare concrete. Even the sk8terboiz at my local park have enough sense to wear helmets, kneepads, and elbowpads.
The pressure has gotten a lot more intense in general, even before you add in COVID and assorted other issues (worrying about her ankle, vast amounts of internet abuse, etc). But in the absence of any substantive information on why Biles withdrew, I’m not inclined to guess at her mental state.
I’ll take door number three, which is that there is more awareness of the effects of the mental pressure and so people before had would have been told to just “suck up and deal” are now being given the time, space and treatment they need.
You are absolutely correct. I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt but I guess I just can’t. She’ll need a better explanation to change my mind. I am trying to be sensitive to her mental health problems but she just dumped on her team at the absolute worst time.
The US Womens’ gymnastic team qualified for the 2020 Olympics by winning the 2018 World Championship. At that event, Biles led the team to a gold medal, won three individual golds, and had a skill named after her added to the code of points despite fighting through kidney stone pain to compete.
If she says she’s not good to go, I’ll take her word for it.
Or maybe shitlords like you getting butthurt and denigrating some of the most mentally tough people in society because they don’t perform to your armchair athlete standards is bothersome, especially when millions of you shitlords feel the need to express your horrid opinion as loudly as possible.
I’m gonna toss USA v Australia in here for that pathetic excuse of a soccer match where they stalled and passed back and forth and made no attempts to move the ball or score, resulting in a 0-0 tie.
Fuckin’ Lame! Get on the World Stage and refuse to compete because you will advance anyway. Fuckin’ Lawyer-Ball at the worst.
And yeah, the coverage kinda blows and there are too many commercials. The shine has really come off this Olympics for me this year.
I think the coverage is excellent – in addition to three or four cable channels, you can go to the NBC Sports website and watch all kinds of other Olympic sports.
Agreed about that soccer match, though.
That’s because, let’s face it, they really hate America now. That’s why they support Putin over Biden, encourage insurrections, and try and kill people and the economy by being anti-mask and anti-vaccine.
I pit the eleven million swimming races. Dadgummit, they should just have two distances (one short, one long) and you have to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. None of this horseshit like: you have to swim on your back, or you have to swim in four different patterns, or you have to swim behind a motorcycle – just get there the fastest.
Ya know, if Darts were an Olympic sport, Phil “The Power” Taylor would probably have 4 times more medals than anyone else in history.
“Let’s see, Gold in 301, 301 Double In, 301 Double In/Double out, 501, 501 Double In, 501 Double In/Double out, 701, 701 Double out, Cricket, Cut-throat Cricket…And then there are the Team events…” and on and on and on…
You get close to naming one of the things I hate about the Olympics, and really any other competition that gets major attention.
The parameters of the “mental portion” are constantly expanded and changed by the kind of marketing and winner-obsessed fervor that the public and the news gets whipped into at every event.
“How does it feel to be a GOAT*”, which is a paraphrase of what I heard in at least one interview this week, is a ridiculous question to ask a young athlete, doubly so when they haven’t even started competing in the major international competition they’re there for.
There are a whole category of psychological challenges involved in competing in the Olympics for Biles and others who are in the spotlight in varying degrees have nothing to do with the psychology of competition, and everything to do with the money-making marketing apparatus around the games. From intense media attention to the flood of “Simone Biles is a national hero/female hero/champion for Black America”-type posts on social media, it would be unsurprising to learn that the pressure from outside the competition played a huge part in her feeling unable to compete.
So, @psychobunny , to your question about whether this generation is just not as “mentally strong” as previous ones, I’d say that I think it’s obvious that the kinds of extra-competition media, notoriety, and pressure that top athletes who capture the public’s attention face is wildly different than in times past. (Also, why does one athlete backing out of a competition have to be a referendum on a whole generation of possibly mentally weak people?).
*(Don’t even get me started on my old person, onion-on-the-belt rant about how the term GOAT itself is ridiculous, ill-defined, and only serves a twisted and unhealthy desire society seems to have really leaned into in recent years to anoint people and things as “the best”)
I hope Simone Biles does whatever she needs to do to keep herself safe and healthy. Gymnastics at this level is very dangerous. Have you seen how much momentum she has coming out of a vault? If she’s not in the right mindset, she could hurt herself badly. I dare anyone to say they want that to happen.
Let me clarify that I feel Biles has every right to withdraw from an event if her health is at risk. If she is not in the right mental state to perform the crazy things she does then she should absolutely withdraw rather than risk injury. My only criticism is the timing. If she had withdrawn before the team competition then MyKayla Skinner or Jade Carey could have taken the fourth spot and had an opportunity to compete as part of the team. Both of them are good enough to be a fourth on the team. Carey, in particular, is in the ninth spot in the all around but will not get to compete because only two can compete for each country.
It does appear that the consensus is that the pressure on these athletes is worse than it has been previously. What do you think can be done to help this? I do think that all the GOAT hype has been excessive. Yes, Biles does things that no other gymnast can but she should not have to carry the whole team. The other gymnasts are also crazy talented.
To the person who claims that I am racist, I will only say that I will never be able to understand the additional pressures placed on POC who are expected to be role models for the community as well as compete in their events. However, I do wish her well and I hope she can find a balance in her life. It makes me think of Katelyn Ohashi, who was at the elite level before dropping back to compete for UCLA. When you listen to her interviews and see her compete, you can see the joy she has in gymnastics.It would be nice to see the Olympic gymnastics have that kind of joy in competing.
Meanwhile, I am still going to say that I wish the skateboarders would wear helmets. I do understand that it is their traditional culture not to wear them but because so many young people are influenced by them, it would help to set a good example, not to mention preventing concussions.
(this is mostly joking. Mostly)