When Simone Biles finished her last exercise on the parallel bars yesterday in Paris, finally liberated, she burst out laughing and started dancing. Finally. The gymnast who has revolutionized her specialty, the best in history, has qualified for the individual final on three of the four apparatuses and has demonstrated that yes, it is possible. That one can break and return if they take care of themselves and prioritize their mental health over anything else, including Olympic glory.
The twisties, what in gymnastics is defined as the disconnection between the mind and body, were a consequence of the trauma suffered from being a victim of sexual abuse, and Biles knew how to stop in time in Tokyo despite the incomprehension of many who called her a coward and even dared to give her lessons on how to handle pressure. “They put you on a pedestal, but I just want to be human,” she says in the magnificent documentary Simone Biles: Rising that premiered on Netflix a week ago. In it, she acknowledges that every time she jumps, that she performs the triple backflip with double twist that only she can do, she feels fear, a lot of fear, that she was unable to train for more than a year after the last Games because she couldn’t control her body and suffered because she was ashamed, that sometimes darkness engulfs her and therapy has been her salvation.
So honest, so sincere, so vulnerable, so incredibly brave to recognize and show herself fragile in front of the whole world, so majestic in her impressive humanity that she has transcended beyond her incredible sporting achievements to become a reference, an inspiration. The legacy of Simone Biles will be eternal, and those of us who are lucky to exist at the same time as her do not only celebrate her flips, twists, and jumps, but ultimately rejoice in the fact that she has been able to laugh and dance. That is her best and greatest triumph because yes, she broke, she fell, but as Maya Angelou wrote and Biles has tattooed on her shoulder: “And yet, I rise.”