Women’s gymnastics team final

[PurpleDaisies]

I am so excited about this. I’ve got coffee in. I’ve got snacks in.

Anyone else?

Mental blocks are not uncommon in gymnastics but can be very dangerous.

I remember the sad case of Elena Mukhina - the 1978 World Champion - who broke her neck during training for the 1980 Olympics attempting an element that she was not totally convinced she could do. As a result she was paralyzed and died from complications in her mid 30s.

I think it was an incredibly brave decision that Simone took to know that she was not safe to compete today and not to attempt to power through despite the full glare of the media when she balked a vault that she has competed hundreds of times without issues since 2013.

She has been "off" since the US trials and the pressure of expectations of her "guaranteeing" US gold added to the media dragging up the sexual abuse scandal in the run up to the Olympics must have been awful for her.

@AngeloMysterioso

It’s the right thing to do, but I can’t help suspecting that “I have to focus on my mental health” also means “I have to focus on my individual competition”.

I doubt it. The way she baulked on both her warm up vault and actual vault was scary. I'm sure Simone would have rather prepared for individual finals by smashing it in the team final, rather than having a total crash of confidence and leaving as she believes the team are better without her. But that's not where her head was and if she couldn't right herself then her only (safe) option is to stop.

I hope she can come back. It would be such a shame for her competitive career to end like this.

Thought people might find this entertaining

twitter.com/joetracini/status/1418974062257258504?s=24

Whatever happens in Tokyo she has been an absolute superstar. You could see it in her face during qualifying that something wasn’t right. I hope she can come back fighting fit. The worst outcome would be for her to try if she’s not really mentally there and get seriously injured.

Simone also wasn’t wrong that her performance could drag her team down. On the very first rotation, the vault, she scored 13.766 - in the whole field of gymnasts only three vaults were scored lower. It was also nearly 1.5 marks lower than her qualification score, which had in itself been affected by a big sidestep on landing. If she’d continued to compete when her confidence was shot, it wasn’t at all unlikely they’d not have won a medal at all.

I remember the sad case of Elena Mukhina - the 1978 World Champion - who broke her neck during training for the 1980 Olympics attempting an element that she was not totally convinced she could do. As a result she was paralyzed and died from complications in her mid 30s.

That wasn’t just a mental block issue, she’d broken her ankle or leg (not sure which) not long beforehand and her coaches didn’t let her recover properly before pressing her back into training and making her attempt the Thomas salto. That move is illegal in women’s gymnastics now and I think possibly men’s as well because it is so dangerous.

Wow just watched Netflex Athlete A. Can't believe what they put their gymnasts through no wonder Simone is struggling mentally 😔

Was it just me who was puzzled by Russia now calling themselves ROC? I had to Google it to discover Russia had been banned from major international competitions including the Olympics because of doping scandals.
As for Simone, most people are being very understanding (apart from in the Daily Mail comments) but if she competes on Thursday and wins the all around, I think she’ll come in for a lot of criticism.

@AngeloMysterioso

I remember the sad case of Elena Mukhina - the 1978 World Champion - who broke her neck during training for the 1980 Olympics attempting an element that she was not totally convinced she could do. As a result she was paralyzed and died from complications in her mid 30s.

That wasn’t just a mental block issue, she’d broken her ankle or leg (not sure which) not long beforehand and her coaches didn’t let her recover properly before pressing her back into training and making her attempt the Thomas salto. That move is illegal in women’s gymnastics now and I think possibly men’s as well because it is so dangerous.

Yes - she was recovering from a leg fracture. However I saw an interview with her where she talked about being really scared of the element and never believed she could do it - but she attempted it anyway.

Was it just me who was puzzled by Russia now calling themselves ROC? I had to Google it to discover Russia had been banned from major international competitions including the Olympics because of doping scandals.

Which is a fucking disgrace because let’s face it, they’re still competing as Russia. Hardly a ban is it?

I was so annoyed by the switching coverage - I was watching several hours behind so I switched to red button ok but, when I tried to switch back the feed had ended and wasn't available to view on iplayer until after I knew the result. My fault but still frustrating.

SO happy for the GB team. Their interview made me cry - especially the slightly taller twin (Jennifer, I think?). So lovely to see them that happy and overwhelmed. Bit of a contrast to the Taekwondo bronze and silvers which left a bit of a nasty taste in my mouth. I know they're disappointed and are interviewed very soon after their matches but really - 'not the colour I wanted', 'I was robbed' and 'I'm gutted' aren't great ways to publicly react to winning an olympic medal.

They’ve had to get a new flag and music from Tchaikovsky to be played instead of the national anthem.
According to Google, only athletes who can prove they had no involvement in the doping are allowed to compete, but it does seem a bit of a pointless ban.

As for Simone Biles, I really feel for her and would be pretty confident she did exactly the right thing. She's worked for this for 5 years and the team final is huge - especially in the US. No way would she drop out of it just on a whim or for selfish reasons. It would have meant so much to her. Fully believe that she genuinely thought she would mess up for the team and/or hurt herself.

She's (one of?) the only gymnasts still competing who were victims of Larry Nasser and the Karolyi training camp. Coming to another olympics must have brought awful memories back and could easily spark off a trauma reaction. Put that on top of the fact that Simone herself, her team, her country and pretty much the entire world expect her to win 6 gold medals in an unpredictable, quite dangerous sport and that's a huge amount of pressure for one person. No shame in not being able to deal with that at all - whether she competes on Thursday and next week or not.

Some of the online abuse on social media is horrific this evening. #SimoneBails is trending on Twitter If she became physically ill during a competition, she and the medical team would have decided together whether she should persevere or bow out, depending on the severity of her symptoms and the difficulty of the competition. No reason it shouldn't be exactly the same when she became mentally unwell during the competition. She's a person first, not a walking gold medal machine.

@blameitonthecaffeine

As for Simone Biles, I really feel for her and would be pretty confident she did exactly the right thing. She's worked for this for 5 years and the team final is huge - especially in the US. No way would she drop out of it just on a whim or for selfish reasons. It would have meant so much to her. Fully believe that she genuinely thought she would mess up for the team and/or hurt herself.

She's (one of?) the only gymnasts still competing who were victims of Larry Nasser and the Karolyi training camp. Coming to another olympics must have brought awful memories back and could easily spark off a trauma reaction. Put that on top of the fact that Simone herself, her team, her country and pretty much the entire world expect her to win 6 gold medals in an unpredictable, quite dangerous sport and that's a huge amount of pressure for one person. No shame in not being able to deal with that at all - whether she competes on Thursday and next week or not.

Some of the online abuse on social media is horrific this evening. #SimoneBails is trending on Twitter If she became physically ill during a competition, she and the medical team would have decided together whether she should persevere or bow out, depending on the severity of her symptoms and the difficulty of the competition. No reason it shouldn't be exactly the same when she became mentally unwell during the competition. She's a person first, not a walking gold medal machine.

Agree with everything you said. It's appalling how her and her previous team mates were treated by the USA gymnastics. The pressure in her is immense plus she is unable to have her family there for support. If you haven't watched Athlete A on netflix I'd definitely recommend it even though it's upsetting. Those poor girls and poor simone she's dealing with alot.

@Meltinthemiddle

Wow just watched Netflex Athlete A. Can't believe what they put their gymnasts through no wonder Simone is struggling mentally 😔

Fucking hell, I’ve just finished watching this. I read about Larry Nassar, but this documentary really shows how brutal the whole regime was, and the extent of his abuse was truly truly horrific. It goes without saying how utterly low anyone trolling Simone on SM is. They could only dream of her achievements.

Meltinthemiddle Yes, I've seen Athlete A. Just horrific that something on that scale was going on that recently in a country like the USA. And UK gymnasts have reported mistreatment too. On nothing like that scale but still - there's a dark side to the sport which urgently needed to be addressed. I hope it is being.

Do you remember all the mockery of Mckayla Maroney in 2012 when she showed her disappointment in the vault final? Even Obama joined in. Treating a 16 year old like that seemed off even at the time but knowing now what the team were enduring (and Mckayla was a particular target of Nasser's, I think) even while the games themselves were in progress makes it so much worse.

@Lunde

Mental blocks are not uncommon in gymnastics but can be very dangerous.

I remember the sad case of Elena Mukhina - the 1978 World Champion - who broke her neck during training for the 1980 Olympics attempting an element that she was not totally convinced she could do. As a result she was paralyzed and died from complications in her mid 30s.

I think it was an incredibly brave decision that Simone took to know that she was not safe to compete today and not to attempt to power through despite the full glare of the media when she balked a vault that she has competed hundreds of times without issues since 2013.

She has been "off" since the US trials and the pressure of expectations of her "guaranteeing" US gold added to the media dragging up the sexual abuse scandal in the run up to the Olympics must have been awful for her.

Sorry to see Biles withdraw.

That’s a shame. Hopefully she can compete in some of the individual finals. I feel so sorry for her.

SB out of the all around finals now too she must be so disappointed as well, but it is just messed up the amount of pressure and expectation piled on her. And that Twitter hashtag is just awful.

Is this her last Olympics do we think? What is she, 23?

It isn’t necessarily her last - Oksana Chusovitina is what 46 and this was her 8th olympics. We saw her at an exhibition a couple of years ago and she was absolutely amazing. Simone is a very special gymnast - absolutely outstanding.

I'm sad she pulled out and I'm not. Sad that this is the situation, it's not what anyone would have wanted. But I'm happy that she and her team have prioritised her wellbeing rather than push through regardless.

She is 24, I don't know if she will continue to Paris 2024, she has the ability (ignoring the current mental block) she doesn't look 'done' or weak in comparison to the rest of the field, certainly not too old. However, she spoke publicly numerous time about how she doesn't want to keep going, she said she was devastated when Tokyo was delayed as she is ready to finish. She has also made it clear that emotionally she finds it difficult to represent the organisation (USAG) that failed her and many others so badly. On the other hand, she did mention recently that she hasn't completely ruled out continuing on as a specialist (I think on vault). I don't know how what happened yesterday effects all of the above.

Personally I hope she comes back, selfishly so I can see her astounding gymnastics, but also it would be very sad for her career to end on a performance she doesn't feel proud of.

Does anyone know how the qualification/reserve system works?

Apparently Jade Carey will be Simone's replacement, which makes sense as there are two athletes allowed from each country, and she is the next US athlete in the qualification list, and higher than the reserves, so would have qualified if Simone hadn't been in the competition to start with. So it seems right that she would be the next to qualify.

But it seems a bit odd to have official reserves then, when actually they have to run through any other gymnasts from a particular country first, who might have come higher than the reserves, before they get to them.

So the reserves I guess are really only reserves for those countries that didn't get more than 2 athletes in the top 24?

I can imagine the pressure put on her by USA gymnastics is immense. She's an outstanding talent, even compared to other world class gymnasts, so it's understandable that they wouldn't want her to drop out but the whole culture would have made it very difficult for her to say she didn't want to continue when she was still first choice.

Saw this on Twitter.

Simone Biles has absolutely nothing to prove, and certainly not to Twitter trolls who have achieved the square root of fuck all in their own sad little lives.

She is the GOAT!!!!