Simone Biles on the Tokyo Olympics and the Outrageously Difficult Vault She Might Try There

[TexasTowelie]

She’s been practicing a Yurchenko double pike—a technique no woman has ever landed in competition.


A year ago this month, the countdown clock to the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo was halted and then reset because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, once again, we’re just about four months out from an Olympic Games that, should they go off as planned in late July, will look different from all that came before. The athletes will still travel to Japan from all over the world, but the spectators will not; as organizers announced last week, only Japanese fans will be allowed to attend the games.

This means that when Simone Biles, the most decorated gymnast in U.S. history, takes her victory lap at the games, there will be fewer people watching her do it live. Biles, who holds the record for most world championship medals in gymnastics, has repeatedly asserted that these Olympics will be her last. This is a hard pill for fans, the media, and even those closest to her to swallow, since Biles’s ability hardly seems to be on the wane; in fact, she’s gotten better and even more dominant since her Olympic triumphs in Rio.

But Biles, who just turned 24, intends to retire from the sport after competing in Tokyo, and she’ll arguably leave it in a better place than when she arrived on the senior elite scene in 2013. She has pushed the technical boundaries of women’s gymnastics forward, pioneering new skills previously thought impossible: the double-double beam dismount and the triple-twisting double somersault on floor exercise, to name just two. Biles has also modeled how to be an advocate on behalf of herself and other gymnasts. Even while still competing on behalf of USA Gymnastics, she’s been a vocal critic of the organization that enabled former team physician Larry Nassar to sexually abuse her and at least 264 other women and girls.

Texas Monthly spoke with Biles, who lives and trains in Spring, about the postponed Olympics, the radical new skill she’s been working on, and learning to speak up publicly about her beliefs.

Read more: https://www.texasmonthly.com/arts-entertainment/simone-biles-on-the-tokyo-olympics-and-the-outrageously-difficult-vault-she-might-try-there/

[hlthe2b]

1. She is unriveled and simply amazing, but I want her to go out on top (but safely)

[a kennedy]

2. Damn right safely.

She does such scary stuff........just want her to win, AND right safely.