Simone Biles’ Emancipation | Paris 2024 Olympics

Charm, depression, emancipation.

On the left shoulder is a tattoo “And yet I rise” (I’m still rising, poem by maya angelou).

Rio 16, girl queen, hyperactive and naive teenager, her eyes wide open and the world an open mouth, she can’t breathe. Four gold medals. Swimsuits and glitter. Glow.

Tokyo 21, withdrawal, mental health. Confrontation with the real world. Expectations. Oppression.

Paris is 24. 27. Mature athlete. Married to Chicago Bears American football star Jonathan Owens. Free. Subordinate to no one but herself. “A married woman, a businesswoman, a happy woman,” she says.

The Olympic parable of Simone Biles, the strength with which she is born and reborn after the plunge, nine years of the life of the best gymnast in history, a woman who gave strength and power to elasticity and elegance, the struggle for liberation. Also an allegory for the life of every person. Biles, black and Texan from the outskirts of Houston, from Spring (fountain, pier, spring), born in Ohio, an alcoholic mother, a foster family and finally adopted by her grandparents along with her sister, is the universal queen of sports. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth and opened the eyes of the whole world to the reality, always in the shadow of glitter and medals, which she faced directly and decisively. She no longer feels threatened, the exploration of her hidden thoughts and fears, the cameras that surround her. They are part of a set, already inert, indifferent, that follows her wherever she goes, wherever she steps, and in the training on the podium (the first in the Bercy arena, in the real setting of the Games, a fundamental contact with materials, light, sound: it is also a show) are reserved only for her, her 142 centimeters of height seem so tiny in the corridors of the labyrinthine track, so gigantic on the tapestry, that she revolutionizes. “I am a rare example of longevity in gymnastics,” he says in L’Equipe.

“I feel like my body is getting older, but I also feel like I have more control over it. I’m lucky to have lasted this long. To believe in yourself, you have to identify with models, and I’m proud to be an example for other gymnasts.” And she is echoed by the Brazilian Rebeca Andrade, the only one who even comes close to her on the gymnastics planet. “She is an incredible athlete who represents many of us and makes the eyes of many black girls in Brazil shine, she makes them fight, and what she represents for me, I want to be for others,” says Andrade, 25, an Olympic champion in show jumping in Tokyo, who is also an example of longevity.

He is in Paris. “Stronger than ever, smarter, more mature, more reliable,” he says.. “And a better athlete than ever. “I enjoy gymnastics more than ever.”

“It’s incredible,” reflects Pablo Carriles, a Spanish gymnastics judge in Paris (in charge of the pommel horse, men’s apparatus). “On the diagonal of the floor, Biles presents Biles II – a double somersault with a triple twist, impossible for any other gymnast for fear of getting hurt again. winding placesthe feeling of being lost in the air if there are turns, but with more difficulty, and very few male gymnasts dare to do it.” winding places It’s a graphic evocation of the Tokyo disaster, the nadir. That Yurchenko triple somersault that won him his last world championship, his answer two years later. Since her return, Biles hasn’t stopped innovating and taking risks, introducing new elements to her best equipment, floor and vault, and even in Paris, she may try something new on the bars.

His journey through life, his journey, is summed up in just 87 seconds by the choreography of his floor routine, designed by French dancer Gregory Milan. It all starts with Taylor Swift. In a powerful rhythm…Ready for this? A little bit mixed with funk Delresto (Echo), Travis Scott and Beyoncé. “My least favorite part of this process is learning a new routine to a new song,” Biles said when she made her debut in June and won the U.S. championship with two points over 15. “But I love Taylor Swift and I love Beyoncé. Those are my girls.”

Between the second and third diagonals, Biles speaks almost like a jazz dancer, hip-hop, in the corner, and at a certain point she stands up, and with such speed that you have to be very careful that they do not go away. unnoticed, deliver three quick punches into the air with a clenched right fist. Are Revelations Alvin Ailey, the choreographer who revolutionized dance in the 1960s by giving black American dancers a stage. “Biles symbolically breaks the cage she was in and she is free,” he explains in The newspaper “New York Times,

Milan, a choreographer who dramatically incorporates punches as a key moment in the narrative of a gymnast’s life. “He will never let anything or anyone hurt him again.”

Then he falls, gets up and flies. This is the third diagonal. Symbolically, he solves this problem with the Biles I, a double backflip with a half twist, the first original move to which he gave his name. It was then, in 2013, that the 16-year-old girl, taking medication for hyperactivity, amazed herself at the world championships in Antwerp. He won the entire competition. It was the beginning of everything. “That’s where I started to believe in myself and my gymnastics,” he says. “And I kept training more and more.”

Bright and extroverted, with a popped champagne cork, Biles, who trains with Aimee Burman, is not just another one, she is the best, but she is not the leader. Then he does not speak for anyone. Perhaps not for her. She does not abandon her role as a remarkable athlete who, three years later, in Rio, won team gold, in the all-around, in the vault and on the floor, conquering the covers of every media outlet in the world and captivating the NBC audience. to levels never seen before. For her, nothing is impossible. Not on the mat, not in the flying rack, not in the asymmetrical. In life, too.

After a year-long sabbatical in which nothing is off-limits and he enjoys it, he returns. Women’s gymnastics in the United States is in its most turbulent years. A hidden thing is coming to light: the decades-long sexual abuse of hundreds of gymnasts by team doctor Larry Nassar. Defenses are falling. Gymnasts are freed from the burden of secrecy. They speak without fear. They are empowered. Biles, who began training with the French pair Cecile and Laurent Landy in the spring of 2019, is not yet one of them. Tokyo is calling. The pandemic is in the way.

The Games are postponed for a year, which is already beginning to weigh on their minds, and they are held in an oppressive atmosphere of seclusion, without communication, team play, joy and celebration in the Olympic Village. These are silent Games. The world was paralyzed, the athletes kept running. Years later, when talking about mental health is not a taboo but a moral imperative, another step towards emancipation, Biles admits that even before arriving in the Japanese capital, she had premonitions, depressive thoughts. Despite her greatness, despite the fact that she is a perfect gymnast, she is depressed. No one doubts that he will win everything. You have no right to make any mistakes. She accepts this and suffers from an identity crisis. “I thought: how did I get to this point? “Is this what I wanted? ” he explains in several interviews. Doubt and lack of reaction overwhelm him as he flies on the vault in the first rotation of the team final. In the air, he decides to stop. He withdraws from the competition. “I just wanted to run away, get out of the gym, get lost, think about myself,” he says. “But I knew I would get better.” He returns, still not fully recovered, only to win a bronze medal on balance beam.

The peace of mind she seeks, the thing that troubles her, she restores by speaking out, by leaving herself. Talk about mental health. “Being able to feel vulnerable in front of everyone was a big risk for me,” but it was a victory, she says. In September 2021, he testifies at the trial condemning Larry Nassar. “I was a victim, too,” he says. But inside, he continues to think that he can’t go on. He wants to retire. Mental therapy triumphs. Biles starts walking around the gym, chatting and laughing with her teammates. Sometimes she puts on a leotard and does exercises. Jumping. Prancing. No one is forcing you. The coaches laugh with her. No one is pressuring him. You have found balance. Gymnastics is not everything anymore, and therefore it can give you everything. There is also family. A dog. Life. Slowly, patiently, return to gymnastics for good. At the World Championships in Antwerp last autumn, the same city of flamenco, 10 years after its opening, was reborn. As usual. Four gold medals. Full equipment, floor. Balance. Numbers: 30 world medals (23 gold), more than anyone; Seven Olympic medals (four gold) – that’s nothing. She flies freely, above everything.

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