Less than a day after Simone Biles withdrew from the Olympic team final on Tuesday following a stumble on the vault, USA Gymnastics announced that she would also withdraw from Thursday’s individual all-around final, where she is the defending gold medalist. In between those two announcements, the celebrated 24-year-old gymnast became a trending topic on Twitter, the recipient of plenty of compliments, and a new punching bag for the right.
First Piers Morgan, last seen walking off the Good Morning Britain set when confronted with his tedious, one-sided feud with Meghan Markle in March, decried Biles for being “selfish” in a MailOnline column, saying, “I preferred the old Simone that would do whatever it took to win.” (Anticipating charges of hypocrisy while also attempting to raise the act of talking on TV for a living to the same level as performing a vault that literally no other woman has tried in competition, Morgan said he should be forgiven because he “went back and finished the discussion.”)
On his podcast, Turning Point USA cofounder Charlie Kirk complained that Biles’s decision allowed Russia to take gold. “We are raising a generation of weak people like Simone Biles,” he said. “Simone Biles just showed the rest of the nation that when things get tough, you shatter into a million pieces.”
In response to Kirk’s remark, Atlantic writer Adam Serwer contemplated what motivated the outburst of condemnation. “Every Trumpist pundit understands the ravenous appetite their audiences have for belittling the tremendously successful black people they see on television, and rushes to meet every opportunity to do it,” he said on Twitter.
It’s not the first time that athletes have become fodder for the culture war, nor will it be the last, but it is an example of how far removed from the actual sport the criticism can be, especially when tied to a broader “snowflake” complaint. Biles withdrew from the competition after a very shaky performance on vault, and there is a strong case to be made that by taking herself out, she might have even helped the team clinch the silver medal.
In dismissing Biles’s “mental toughness,” few, if any, complaints mentioned her connection to the abuse scandal in elite gymnastics. In 2018, Biles said she was one of the many victims of Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics doctor who pleaded guilty to multiple counts related to child pornography and criminal sexual conduct. As Vogue pointed out last year, she is the only active Olympian who disclosed her abuse and continued to compete at the elite level. Biles has said that her decision to participate in the Tokyo Games was informed by a desire to bring continued visibility to the abuse that happened under the watch of USA Gymnastics. In April 2020, Biles told Vogue that she had an emotional reaction to hearing that the Olympics were going to be postponed. “We were gripping at the bars, and I just started crying,” Biles said. “Another year of dealing with USAG. That, I don’t know if I can take.”
People who had a bit more firsthand knowledge of the situation were more sympathetic. On Tuesday, Michael Phelps, an Olympic medalist who has become a mental health advocate since opening up about his own experience with depression, said he could relate to Biles. “The Olympics is overwhelming,” he said. Aly Raisman, another former Olympian who, like Biles, has said she was a victim of Nassar, tweeted, “Love you,” to Biles. Rachael Denhollander, Nassar’s first public accuser, thanked Biles for her work to help dismantle systems of abuse in elite gymnastics. Dominique Moceanu, who was a member of the 1996 gold-medal-winning team at the age of 14, shared a video of her sustaining a tibial stress fracture on a fall and said that Biles’s “decision demonstrates that we have a say in our own health—‘a say’ I NEVER felt I had as an Olympian.” It’s impossible to deny that a broader culture war is leading to these discussions. But it’s telling that some of the people advocating for a contextless idea of “mental toughness” aren’t the ones who have seen what that ideology can condone when put into practice.
Team USA is still in the position to medal in the remaining women’s gymnastics events, and Biles has not said if she plans to compete in the individual event finals next week. On Thursday she will be replaced by 21-year-old gymnast Jade Carey, who finished ninth in Sunday’s qualifying round and would have made the all-around final if it weren’t for a controversial two-per-country rule. She will be joined by 18-year-old Sunisa Lee, who performed her floor routine in Biles’s stead on Tuesday and also got the day’s highest score on the uneven bars.
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