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On Saturday, American gymnast Simone Biles, considered one of the strongest ever in artistic gymnastics, took part in her first competition since she unexpectedly withdrew from five out of six competitions at the Tokyo Olympics in the summer of 2021 due to some health problems mental, which he spoke openly. She arrived first.
Biles, who is 26 years old (considered a high age for the career of artistic gymnastics athletes), made it known that she had worked on herself “after everything that happened in Tokyo” and said she felt very good “where I am now, both mentally and physically.”
The race he entered on Saturday at Chicago’s Now Arena was the “US Classic,” an event that the New York Times he defined «a low profile qualifying match for the national championships which, however, this year has become a show thanks to the presence of Biles». The videos of her exercises circulated a lot online, among sports enthusiasts and among those who in recent years had followed Biles’ story for the way she had managed her retirement and had managed to get people talking about the problem of pressure, fear of failure and overall mental health among elite athletes.
The competition began on the uneven bars, where Biles had a score of 14.000 (third best) and continued on beam, with 14.800, and floor exercise, with 14.900, both high scores. Finally, she scored 15,400 points on vault doing the Yurchenko double pike, a jump considered very complex and dangerous that Biles herself had done first in an official competition in 2021. She finished first with a big difference – by 5 points – from runner-up, Leanne Wong.
Biles has won a total of seven Olympic medals between the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro (2016) and Tokyo (2021) and is joint with Shannon Miller the gymnast who has won the most in the history of women’s artistic gymnastics in the United States, and the ninth in the world. She is also the gymnast to have won the most medals at the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships: 25.
– Read also: Simone Biles in the history of artistic gymnastics
At the 2021 Olympics, during the first vault test in the Olympic team artistic gymnastics competition, Biles, who was then considered the strongest gymnast in activity, was supposed to perform an Amanar – a very complex jump with two and a half twists -, but she had only managed to complete a twist and a half, losing balance at the moment of exit. After the exercise she Biles announced her definitive retirement, and speaking with reporters she said she had lost awareness of her body in space (which in artistic gymnastics is called twisties) while he was in the air and explained that after the rehearsal he didn’t want to go on, and talked about the difficulty of managing the stress and pressures due to expectations towards him.
Initially it was not known whether Biles would return to compete, also because before the Tokyo Olympics she had made some statements in which she had spoken of no longer wanting to deal with the US sports federation for gymnastics, USA Gymnastics. After Saturday’s race she told the press that she returned to the gym last fall to keep fit, with no prospect of returning to competition. In May she then convinced herself to start over with more intensive training.
Biles has not yet made it known what his intentions are with respect to the Olympics to be held next year in Paris.