How many football players would get the same treatment if they backed out of the Super Bowl on gameday?
Winning a gold medal isn’t the only criterion to assess strength and character. She clearly knew that an entire Olympic team and nation were counting on her to deliver multiple gold medals. A lot of people in her situation would have regarded it as an obligation to play through mental anguish. She chose not to, knowing that probably a third of this country (the Fox News crowd) would scorn her as weak and un-American. When we get trolled here, it has zero real-world consequences. Try living in a world of harassment, including creepy threats.
These didn’t. And they weren’t allowed to withdraw, either. Anyone other than Simone would probably have been pressured to stay in; it was only her visibility that made it possible for her to say it was too much.
“Hey, my whole family just died in a terrible car accident, but don’t worry, Coach, I’ll still play today.”
How are you not getting that a mental health issue can be as sudden and serious as a sudden physical injury?
You are suggesting a massive personal tragedy is the same as just deciding your head is not in the game?
Really?
And yeah, shell shock was a thing and in WWI they learned they needed to rotate soldiers out of battle for some R&R.
What does ANY of that have to do with Biles?
Once a poster has made their point and historically is not open to change their mind, even when facing overwhelming evidence against their position, I’m not sure there’s much point in trying to engage him.
Nope; I stopped.
No, dude, it was after it became apparent that you had no arguments at all, just a position.
Sorry…I got in trouble from the mods not too long ago so I withdrew my comment. Not a trick on my part.
Yup.
I’m a property casualty actuary. One of the emerging risks in my field is traumatic brain injury, mostly from contact sports. Once, at a continuing education event, i watched a half hour film of young athletes getting concussions. (Some wobbled off the field of play. A lot tried to keep going.)
I can’t tell you how delighted i am to have not had to watch Ms Biles break her neck on live TV.
The twisties is new to me, but reading about it, it’s clearly an extremely dangerous condition, and the only responsible choice was to withdraw, both for her safety and to give her team a chance of winning. She wasn’t going to pull it off by force of will any more than a football player with a broken leg could do that. What Olympic athlete WANTS to back out and not have a chance to show her stuff? She backed out because she realized she couldn’t do it.
Why not?
Personally, I’ve been wondering if she might have an extremely mild case of covid. A fairly common covid symptom is dizziness and disorientation, and a really really minor case of that, a case that you or i wouldn’t even notice, could easily bring on the twisties.
But maybe it was just emotional stress that brought it on. Or maybe it was something that happened to her, like having her inner ear physically stressed on the airplane. I dunno. But if she said it came on suddenly, my inclination is to believe her.
Sure it is possible.
But she has been competing most of her life. This is not new or a surprise to her. In fact, she has been here before.
Maybe a mental break can occur out of nowhere but, for most people, the issues leading to a break builds over time. I would submit it is rare to wake one morning just fine and wake the next and collapse mentally. Whatever lead to the collapse was there the previous morning.
She didn’t “collapse mentally”. She has a very specific condition, that has a name that’s apparently well-known to gymnasts. Maybe psychological stress brought it on. Maybe something physical that was too minor to notice did. It doesn’t matter. It means she can’t compete.
Other gymnasts seen to think it CAN come on suddenly. Why do you know better than they do?
Fine.
I 1 million percent agree she needs to withdraw (as I have said repeatedly).
I disagree that she should be lauded for doing so (see Atlantic article earlier in the thread). Nor ridiculed. Just a “we get it” and she goes home.
Again, if Tom Brady decided he had the yips 10 minutes before the Super Bowl started would you be praising him for backing out?
I don’t know what “yips” means, but i read she has the twisties. And that she had it before, and her coach had to pull her out of competition because she didn’t recognize the condition back then.
If Tom Brady’s arm stopped obeying the instuctions his brain sent it, ten minutes before the Superbowl, I’d say he was brave to admit it and give his team a chance to win without him, rather than be dragged down by his lack of performance. I also think he’d be unlikely to break his spine if he completed, so it’s not quite as big a deal. But yes, i DO praise football players (and their coaches) who pull them out when they got their head, rather then bulling through a concussion.
But … I don’t want to distract the thread with all the issues there are with football…
Just FYI: I linked “yips” above to a definition.
And the question was if you would praise Tom Brady for backing out of the Super Bowl ten minutes before it started.
I am pretty sure you are locked in to saying “yes” to that at this point but most people would not be agreeing with you. In fact, I would expect a lot of fury if he did that.
Thanks. So it sounds like it’s a broader category that includes the twisties.
I note that golfers who can’t putt, bowlers who fail to release the ball properly, and baseball players who can’t throw, don’t risk death or paraplegia by trying to play anyway, though.
I am so SO glad we didn’t watch that happen to Biles.
I don’t think Joe Theismann belongs on Mount Rushmore.
Me too.
But I am not praising her for quitting either.
You said she has suffered from this before. If so, maybe she should have quit then rather than get to the Olympics and fail herself, her team and her country.
… have you actually done any research into this at all? Are you relying on what other people in this thread are saying to inform you?
Because you are speaking very authoritively, but you also don’t seem to know the basics of what happened. So do you actually have a basis to being so confident in your opinion? Because not a single gymnast, athlete or expert has come out to agree with you. Can you explain your unique insight considering you don’t seem to know what actually happened? Are you a sports psychologist? Former gymnast or Olympic level athlete?
Has a gymnast ever backed out of competing in the Olympics because of the Twisties before this?
I can’t find an occurrence of that.
I can’t find the article, but it happened in her teens, and not at a major competition. She’s done very well as a gymnast in the intervening years.