As soon as I landed that vault, I went and told my coach: 'I cannot continue. If that was any other person, they would have gone out on a stretcher. She was competing on the vault first, but only completed a 1.5 flip after going for a 2.5. And I’ve never experienced that."ĭespite this, Biles stepped out to compete in the team all-around final alongside Jordan Chiles, Sunisa Lee and Grace McCallum. "Every avenue we tried, my body was like, 'Simone, chill. "I was not physically capable," the American said. Simone Biles, of the United States, waits for her turn to perform during the Artistic Gymnastics women’s final at the 2020 Summer Olympics on Jin Tokyo, Japan. "I didn’t feel as confident as I should have been with as much training as we had."Īfter qualifying for all six Olympic finals, Biles struggled to execute moves in training. "Leading up to it, I got more and more nervous," she said. “When I was training there really weren’t resources for us to talk about our mental health or even ways to understand it,” Raisman told ESPN.Biles revealed the trouble started upon arrival in Tokyo, where there were strict COVID-19 regulations in place. The 27-year-old, who retired last year, raised doubts about what kind of psychological support there was for Biles and other American athletes. “There’s only so much someone can take, she’s human,” Raisman told US television. “And that can further perpetuate a kind of silent suffering and self-isolation.”Īly Raisman, a three-time Olympic gold medallist and a former teammate of Biles’s, said that Biles had been under immense pressure for months leading up to Tokyo because of the weight of expectation. “There has always been, within the athletic world, the emphasis on appearing physically fit and appearing mentally fit,” she told CBC/Radio-Canada. Katy Kamkar, a clinical psychologist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, said that Biles’ admission would help “normalise the conversation”. See also: Tokyo 2020 Olympics: 21 Asian Olympians Who Won Their First Gold Medals “They used to be able to go out and party after their events, but now they’re not able to do that, for the first time in recent history.” “I reckon the bubble of the Olympic village is having a big impact on athletes,” she said. Tullberg said that the unprecedented anti-virus measures facing athletes at the Tokyo Games, where they are largely confined to the Olympic Village, had undoubtedly taken a toll on competitors. “There are support networks offered to us all the time, we’re encouraged to seek support, and people are now taking those options because they’re not so fearful of the repercussions if it’s known in their workplace that they’re struggling.” “But people are now more willing to talk about it (their mental health),” she said. People deal with “performance anxiety” in all walks of life, said Tullberg, and that has been exacerbated by people across the world living in intermittent lockdowns in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. “However, athletes are now willing to talk about their pressures openly,” she said. Julie-Ann Tullberg, an expert in sports psychology and sports journalism at Monash University in Australia, told AFP that “mental health has long been swept under the carpet as a reason of underperformance in high-pressure sporting events such as the Olympic Games”. See also: Team Singapore at Tokyo 2020 Olympics: All the Highlights So Far In 2018, NBA star Kevin Love said that he had suffered a panic attack during a match, while Olympic swimming great Michael Phelps and England cricketer Marcus Trescothick have also openly documented their mental struggles. After Raducanu’s explanation, England and Manchester United forward Marcus Rashford said that he too had suffered something similar when he was a teenager. The teenager subsequently explained that the “whole experience caught up with me”. At Wimbledon earlier this month, 18-year-old Briton Emma Raducanu came out of nowhere to reach the fourth round, only to retire from the match with what was first described as “breathing difficulties”. Biles and Osaka, who are aged just seven months apart, are by no means the only young athletes to suffer in the public eye. The Japanese had only just returned after two months away from the game after revealing that she had been suffering depression. As a home hope and one of the faces of the Games, the 23-year-old said that there was “a lot of pressure”.
Fore, executive director of UNICEF, thanked Biles “for being a role model and showing the world it’s okay to prioritise your mental health”.Īlso on Tuesday, Osaka-who lit the Olympic cauldron at the opening ceremony-suffered a shock early exit in the tennis. Within hours there was an outpouring of sympathy on social media for Biles, who is already a four-time olympic gold medallist, that went beyond sport.
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