Saturday, July 31, 2021 | 2 a.m.
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As usual, Simone Biles stuck her landing.
Biles, arguably the greatest gymnast ever to chalk her hands, found another way to shock the world Tuesday when she pulled out of the team all-around gymnastics competition at the Tokyo Olympics, ascribing it to mental unease.
“This Olympic Games, I wanted it to be for myself when I came in — and I felt like I was still doing it for other people,” Biles, 24, said through tears following the event. “So that just, like, hurts my heart because doing what I love has been kind of taken away from me to please other people.”
Without its anchor, Team USA lost its grip on the lead and fell to the Russian gymnasts, claiming the silver medal.
Biles’ decision would have been almost unthinkable in previous generations of sport. Not so in this age of soaring athlete self-advocacy, particularly in the realm of mental health. The gymnast’s withdrawal was a particularly high-profile example of the trend away from silent suffering.
“Each team has a team psychologist,” said Kirk Morrison, a former NFL linebacker who now analyzes college football for ESPN. “But it was kind of a stigma 15 to 20 years ago, like ‘something’s wrong with you.’ Or ‘he’s not focused.’ To see the team psychologist was not the best thing, especially publicly. Back then, we didn’t know any better.”
That is changing. And the reaction to Biles’ stance reflected a similar shift in opinion, at least in the media. Granted, there was a smattering of rebuke, mostly from right-wing commentators who have made an industry of dismissing things that carry a whiff of “inclusion” or “feelings.” But they were largely drowned out by a deluge of affirmation for Biles, who received social media support from people as varied as U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, Rep. Ayanna Pressley, boxing legend Manny Pacquiao and the actor Kathy Griffin.
The general public wasn’t as unified. Many sports fans are still coming to terms with accepting that the athletic feats they have always dreamed of performing could be treated as optional by the few who are able.
The potential for public shaming is one of the many pressures that have long dragged athletes to the start line or the batter’s box or the goalkeeper’s net when they may have had no desire to be there. There are many other factors, including financial concerns, relatively short career windows, and the pressure of family, teams, organizations, sponsors and agents.
It’s especially true for Olympians, said Dr. Joan Steidinger, a clinical and sports psychologist based in Mill Valley.
“Anyone who works with Olympic athletes will tell you there’s a lot of pressure that comes from the drive to get golds,” said Steidinger, who has written two books on women in sports. “And it doesn’t take into account the psychological part of it. They’ve really neglected so many things when it comes to mental health, and to abuse.”
Those stresses have magnified exponentially in the age of social media. As Morrison noted, Biles’ gymnastic predecessors vaulted into the spotlight every four years, with quieter moments in the interim. Now Olympic athletes are always one click away from being adored or flamed on Twitter or Facebook.
“One thing I noticed doing college football broadcasts, a lot of times these youth are hyped up,” Morrison said. “They have a following before they experience disappointment. Then it’s hard to experience the disappointment when it happens.”
Yet most athletes will concede that the stronger pressure is internal. While casual observers tend to focus on the physical talent that sets sports heroes apart, few of those achievers could have reached such heights without a drive and discipline that borders on obsession. To step back from that focus and acknowledge mental pain or doubt is incredibly difficult.
It’s happening more and more, though.
Among the many athletes who have openly discussed their struggles over the past few years are NBA All-Stars Kevin Love and DeMar DeRozan, 23-time gold medal swimmer Michael Phelps, NFL players Dak Prescott and Brandon Marshall, gymnast Aly Raisman and MMA fighter Ronda Rousey. The growing chorus makes it that much easier for others to come forward.
Before Biles bowed out of the team all-around, American tennis player Naomi Osaka was the recent test case. Osaka, 23, refused to do post-match press conferences at the French Open at the end of May, citing her anxiety, then pulled out of the tournament entirely when organizers fined and threatened to expel her.
Osaka lit the Olympic torch in Tokyo but was upset in the third round of the women’s tennis competition. “The scale of everything is a bit hard,” she said afterward.
Rare is the athlete who has never had to confront a bout of anxiety or depression. Morrison said it got him when the Raiders traded him to Jacksonville in 2010. It was right around the same time for distance runner Sara Hall. She was just a few years into her professional career, living an isolated life with her husband, marathoner Ryan Hall. Sara was at odds with her coach and beset by nagging injuries.
“I had lost a lot of confidence in myself,” said Hall, who won the 3,000-meter steeplechase at the Pan-Am Games and clocked the second-fastest marathon ever by an American woman. “I was really struggling physically to get my body to perform. It spirals then. It starts physical but it becomes mental. You interpret your circumstances differently if you’re not confident. Like if you’re hitting a wall in a race, it becomes that much harder to overcome.”
Hall turned to her Christian faith for strength. For Morrison, it was the knowledge that a second career in broadcasting likely awaited him. Both wonder what it’s like for athletes with less support and fewer opportunities off the field.
The new frankness in the mental health space is part of a larger movement of athlete self-advocacy. You saw it in former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s insistence on kneeling during the national anthem to call attention to police brutality against African Americans, and in NBA stars’ collective decisions to form superteams, and in the NFL players who this year shut down 21 clubs’ “voluntary” offseason workouts — camps that have long been perceived as anything but discretionary — because of COVID-19 concerns.
Now college athletes are being afforded some of that same agency. After a yearslong battle, the NCAA relented on July 1 and approved a plan to allow its players to profit from their names, images and likenesses.
Athlete activism is nothing new. Boxer Muhammad Ali’s refusal to join the U.S. military, the gloved-hand podium protests of American Olympic sprinters John Carlos and Tommie Smith, and Curt Flood’s dogged pursuit of free agency in Major League Baseball all contributed to roiling the 1960s and early 1970s. But those men paid dearly for their stances, drawing mainstream scorn and negating chances at endorsement opportunities.
Acceptance is growing now as sports executives, and the fans who make their salaries possible, begrudgingly acknowledge that it’s the grace and coordination of the talent, more than the uniforms, that draw us into the games. The journey isn’t always fast.
“We’ve made progress,” Steidinger said. “But it’s snail’s progress. I still think there’s a lot of judgment. If you say you went to a sports psychologist, that’s OK. If you just say ‘psychologist,’ it’s like there’s something wrong with that.”
Transcendent figures like Biles, who coils unworldly explosive power into a 4-foot, 8-inch frame, and who has emerged in recent years as an outspoken critic of gymnastics’ toxic environment — she was one of 150 young women who reported being sexually abused by USA Gymnastic team doctor Larry Nassar — are helping to change that.
There is risk to an athlete’s image when he or she admits their vulnerability. But Hall believes there is appeal in it, too.
“It’s natural as fans to just see the performance side of athletes, to see them like robots,” she said. “But the human element is what inspires people. Just realizing they’re not always superhuman. I think that humanity is inspiring in itself, that they can have these moments like anyone else.”
Phil Barber is a columnist for the Press Democrat of Santa Rosa, Calif.
