PARIS — Relax, everybody. Simone Biles appears to be OK.
Biles powered through the rest of Olympic gymnastics qualifying on Sunday after tweaking her calf during warmups on floor exercise. Cecile Landi, who is one of Biles’ personal coaches and also coach of the U.S. women’s team, said she has no concerns about Biles being able to continue competing at the Paris Olympics.
‘She felt better at the end, yeah,’ Landi said.
The team final, where the Americans are heavy favorites to win gold, is Tuesday. The all-around final, where Biles is expected to become just the third woman to win a second Olympic title, is Thursday.
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Chellsie Memmel, the technical lead for the U.S. women’s team, had said last week that Biles doesn’t have to do all four events in team finals if she doesn’t want to. Although that was done so Biles doesn’t feel as if she’s a ‘gold-medal token’ as she was made to feel in Tokyo, having that option available could take on additional importance now.
‘First and foremost, I just want to make sure she’s physically OK and then we’re just going to go from there,’ Memmel said, noting that she hadn’t had a chance to talk with Biles yet.
During warmups on floor exercise, Biles landed the Biles I, a double layout with a half-twist, and appeared to pull her left leg up. She had a conversation with Laurent Landi, Cecile Landi’s husband and Biles’ co-coach, and then left the mat with a grim look on her face.
After talking with Cecile Landi, she then left the floor with Dr. Marcia Faustin, the team doctor. Biles had felt something in her left calf a couple of weeks ago, Cecile Landi said, ‘but after, it stopped. And then just a little again today.’
When Biles and Faustin returned from backstage, another member of the medical team taped her ankle tightly. She looked somber as she walked around, as if to test it.
Asked if Biles gave any thought to withdrawing from the competition, Cecile Landi said no.
‘Never in her mind,’ she said.
Biles might have been in pain, but it didn’t affect her gymnastics. She opened her floor routine with a triple-twisting, double somersault, better known as the Biles II. Aside from being an incredibly difficult skill, it demands a lot — a lot, a lot — of every part of her leg. She went out of bounds on the landing, but that is not out of the ordinary. She did the same thing at meets earlier this summer.
The only thing Biles didn’t do in her floor routine was the stag leap that usually follows the Biles I, a very minor omission. Though there are still three more subdivisions to come, her score of 14.6 is likely to stay as the highest on the event.
Biles also did her signature Yurchenko double pike (15.8), a vault so difficult few men even do it, and finished with only a slight mistake on uneven bars, where she wobbled briefly on a handstand. When she finished bars, she went over to salute a crowd of U.S. fans, smiling and waving.
“Yeah,’ Biles quipped after her score, a 14.433, posted. ‘That’s good.’
Then she flashed a big grin.
‘Incredible,’ Memmel said, laughing, when asked her reaction to Biles’ performance. ‘She is an outstanding gymnast and a person and an overall human. So, what she was able to do, with looking like she had some soreness or something in her lower leg, is remarkable.’
Though the injury had to have put a scare in Biles — she has talked of these Olympics being ‘redemption’ after a case of ‘the twisties’ kept her out of most of the Tokyo Olympics — she perked up as the meet went on. She spotted her parents while she and her teammates were warming up on vault, and was smiling and laughing as she waved at them.
After landing one practice vault, she motioned to teammates and then jokingly crawled partway toward the runway. Then she got up and hopped on her right leg. ‘I’m going to need a wheelchair,’ she said, according to the Peacock broadcast, though she appeared to be making light of the apparent ankle injury.
When she was waiting to go on uneven bars, she spotted her brother and her toddler niece in the stands and waved enthusiastically. She also acknowledged several U.S. fans with waves and smiles.
‘What she did today? I mean, it was pretty amazing. (A score of) 59.5 and four-for-four (hits),’ Cecile Landi said. ‘Not perfect, so she still can improve with it. Just really good.’
And good for Biles.
That there was even a question of her availability was devastating after her experience at the Tokyo Games. Biles withdrew after one event in the team final with a case of “the twisties,” which caused her to lose her sense of where she was in the air. Unwilling to risk her physical safety, Biles also withdrew from the all-around, vault, uneven bars and floor exercise finals.
She returned for the balance beam final, winning a bronze medal with a reworked routine. But Biles returned home, questioning whether she’d ever be able to do gymnastics again, uncertain she could trust herself. Or her gymnastics.
But she has put in work through therapy and set boundaries to reduce the anxiety that contributed to the twisties, and has been better than ever since her return. She easily won her sixth world title in 2023 and ninth U.S. title in June and, so long as she’s able to compete, is certain to get the redemption here that she seeks.
That, and several more gold medals.