![]() “Today it’s like, you know what, no, I don’t want to do something stupid and get hurt,” she said. She is older and smarter, and realizes there is more to life than gymnastics. Therapy and medications usually work, she explained, but even then high stress situations can cause her to “really freak out” because she doesn’t know how to handle the battery of emotions.įour or five years ago, Biles said, she would have suffered through the competition despite being in mental turmoil, even chancing a serious injury. I have no problem admitting that, but I’m human.”īiles said she came to the Olympics “feeling pretty good,” yet was dealing with some issues that grew tougher by the day. I know I definitely let some people down. ![]() But he finished seventh in Sunday’s street competition, later saying in an Instagram post that he had “never felt so much pressure.” The American Nyjah Huston, the biggest name in contest skateboarding, was also a gold medal favorite. “You psychologically and emotionally and physically gear up and all of a sudden someone pulls the plug and you sit around biting your nails, ‘I have to wait another year.’ A lot of anxiety builds up.”Īnd at the Tokyo Games, there is a lack of supportive energy from the largely empty arenas. “You pace yourself, you know the fourth year is the Olympic year,” said Steven Ungerleider, a sports psychologist from Eugene, Ore. The postponement of the Games last year increased the tension by causing what athletes loathe - a change in routine. But Biles, Osaka and others in their generation have been vocal about putting their mental health first and the expectations of others, at best, second.Įven in normal times, Olympic competition can be emotionally fraught for athletes, some just teenagers, who wear their nations’ flags and carry the hopes of countless supporters as they perform for a worldwide audience. It would have been unimaginable only a few years ago for an Olympic athlete to admit to significant doubts during the Games, much less to withdraw from an event. “The scale of everything is a bit hard,” she said. Osaka, too, spoke of buckling under the high demands of the Olympic stage, having lit the Olympic cauldron and carried the expectation of her home country, Japan, that she win gold. Lee/The New York Timesīiles’s withdrawal was a stunning turnabout for the Americans, who won team gold at every world championships and Olympics since 2010, and it came hours after another superstar athlete, Naomi Osaka, was upset in the third round of the women’s singles tennis tournament by a player with a far lower ranking.īiles said after the competition that she had hoped to compete for herself, but “felt like I was still doing it for other people.” She added, “So that just, like, hurts my heart, because doing what I love has been kind of taken away from me to please other people.” ![]() Simone Biles with her coach during the team final. ![]()
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