MINNEAPOLIS — Simone Biles has earned this moment, in every meaning of the word.
As expected, Biles won the Olympic gymnastics trials on Sunday night and the automatic spot on the Paris Olympics team, extending an unbeaten streak in all-around competitions that began way back in 2013. Also as expected, it wasn’t close. Even with a fall on balance beam — at this point, a trials tradition — she finished with 117.225 points, a whopping five-plus points ahead of Suni Lee.
And now she is headed to the Olympics for a third time, seeking a better experience than the nightmare of Tokyo three years ago.
“She’s calm. She laughs. She’s back to her same goofy self that we had missed,” Cecile Landi, who coaches Biles with husband Laurent Landi, said last week. “She has a few tools that are personal to her but that help her stay calm and remember why she’s here.”
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It isn’t to add more medals to her collection. With 37 from the world championships and Olympics, including four golds from the Rio Games in 2016, Biles is already the most decorated gymnast, male or female. It isn’t to try to burnish her legacy, either. She long ago established herself as the greatest gymnast in history and another title, even a second all-around crown, isn’t going to change how history remembers her.
It’s for herself. And it’s because she can, not long after she feared she couldn’t.
Pretty much the entire world had a front-row seat to Biles’ trauma in Tokyo. Mental health issues, aggravated by the isolation caused by the strict COVID protocols, brought on a case of “the twisties,” causing her to lose her sense of where she was in the air. Unwilling to risk her physical safety, Biles withdrew during the team final and also missed 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 that didn’t require her to twist.
Biles took more than a year off, unsure if she wanted to do elite gymnastics again. Even when she did return, it took time to rebuild her trust in herself.
“I didn’t trust myself to do gymnastics,” Biles said after the U.S. championships, where she extended her own record with her ninth title. “I knew that it would come if I started training again, but it was really hard to trust myself. The mental part was harder than the physical.”
She has done the work, speaking openly about prioritizing her mental well-being as much as her physical health. Her weekly appointments with her therapist are as non-negotiable as training and recovery sessions.
The difference is obvious. Biles’ gymnastics are even more impressive – she won five medals, four of them gold, at the world championships last fall, including her sixth all-around title – but she also looks happy to be doing them. She is often laughing and smiling on the floor, rather than looking weighed down or burdened. When a 106-year-old military veteran said on the in-house broadcast during a break in the action Sunday that Biles was his favorite, she stood in front of him, beaming as she saluted him by making a heart shape with her hands.
She has fully embraced her role as a team leader, too. When Lee disappeared backstage after a botched beam routine Sunday night, Biles was waiting for her when she returned. She could be seen making Lee laugh before Lee nodded, as if to say, “OK, I’m good now.”
It was a reminiscent of a scene at championships, when Biles stood near the uneven bars podium and cheered on Lee, whose confidence had been shaken by a scary vault.
“I just knew that she needed some encouragement and somebody to trust her gymnastics for her and to believe in her. So that’s exactly what I did,” Biles said then. “I’ve been in her shoes. I know how traumatizing it is, especially on a big stage like this.”
Biles has said she went to Tokyo feeling as if something was off. Now, as she goes to Paris for her third Olympics, everything feels right.
Deservedly so.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.
