There is no sweetness, only sadness that accompanies Simone Biles – who is expected to become queen at the 2020 Summer Olympics.

After withdrawing from the team final, causing the US to lose to Russia and lose the Gold Medal, Biles was also unable to attend the women’s individual all-around final, due to mental health.

Women change the world

Simone Biles revolutionized form – the strength and acrobatic technique that led gymnastics to consider perfection of technical gesture as the absolute goal – and women’s artistic gymnastics.

Gymnasts are no longer girls silent because of fear, but women with a strong voice of their own. Happy athletes. And when they hear the word gymnastics, most people associate it with images of a woman jumping on racks or lying prone on the floor with springs in a gym, not with power. to which they must obey.

“Thanks to Simone, you start to see how people tell you, the food, the fun, the gymnastics, it’s great…”, says Spanish gymnast Laura Bechdeju.

“She is a champion, but she does not overshadow us. On the contrary, she gives us more light, and we are working hard to one day overshadow those other, or become a star of your country… Thanks to her, gymnastics is known as a great sport.”

Women’s gymnastics has changed. The coaches have changed; the way they treat athletes in most cases of childhood and gymnasts has changed, now people are in charge of their self-esteem.

They, the coaches, have erased the much-admired role model of Bela Karolyi – a very successful, but controversial coach with physical torture and moral humiliation; coaching is more akin to bullying than a healthy athletic relationship; is the creator of Nadia Comaneci, who is still a gymnastics icon worldwide.

The Karolyi Method ushered in a very long period of athletes being fed negative thoughts, growing up with eating disorders and low self-esteem. Being skinny becomes the norm, and many people consider food to be the most dangerous poison to a fitness career.

Marina Gonzalez, Spanish athlete, said: “Simone has brought female gymnastics out of lifelong stereotypes, out of orbit. You can be tall, short, younger, older… Last Sunday, we played against Chusovitina who was 46 years old and the 16 year old girls also gave us some lessons…

The good thing about gymnastics is, you can be of any physical type or age, you can do whatever you want.”

Simone Bile and the fight against sexual abuse

It all started in 2016 with a scandal in the US, a sexual abuse complaint against Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, about whom more than 260 gymnasts testified, in a trial. ended with a sentence of 175 years in prison.

Nassar spent 18 years as a doctor on the US Gymnastics team. During this time, he abused hundreds of girls (at least 265), including sexually assaulting minors.

Those voices have created a breeze around the world, broadcasting the languages ​​of gymnasts in different countries that they have never dared to denounce. Above all, a gymnastics star, the best in history, is not alone.

Simone Biles eventually announced that she too had been abused by Nassar; At the same time, he denounced all authorities that allowed and encouraged such behavior.

The lack of support from colleagues is something that Gloria Viseras – a one-time Spanish gymnastics prodigy who attended the 1980 Moscow Olympics at the age of 15 – encountered when she denounced the abuse she suffered from her colleagues. Coach Jesus Carballo.

Her voice barely resonated, had minimal support, drowned out by the voices of officials and unions refusing to investigate further. Viseras no longer sees herself as a champion, “but as a dirty girl for letting him do those things”. She was abused countless times between the ages of 12 and 15.

Fortunately, Biles’s voice did not go into the same rut as Viseras’s.

Simone Biles is the only victim of Nassar still playing. She is the leader that people look up to, the one they admire for her physical and psychological strength.

In April 2020, Biles was training when the postponement of the Olympics was officially announced. She immediately went to a corner of the practice room and started crying. She looked like she couldn’t last another year.

Simone went through days of depression, lack of sleep, and sadness. She traveled, bought a house, got a boyfriend, and forgot about gymnastics for a few weeks. When she returned, one question always perforated her cerebellum, and sometimes she said it to herself: “Besides fitness, who am I? I’m still looking for myself.”