Simone Biles Powers Through Calf Injury During Olympic Qualifying Rotations
Simone Biles is ready to compete in the 2024 Paris Olympics three years after withdrawing from multiple events during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Biles, 27, participated in the all-around gymnastics qualifiers on Sunday, July 28, despite feeling pain in her calf. After her rotation on the balance beam, she appeared to limp off the mat. She got her ankle taped up before subsequent rounds.
“She felt a little something in her calf. But yeah, that’s all,” Biles’ coach Cecile Landi told reporters on Sunday, per CNN.
At the end of the qualifiers, Biles earned a score of 59.566 and told reporters that she felt “as good as [she] can be.”
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Biles’ husband, NFL safety Jonathan Owens, supported her Olympic quest from afar as he is currently in Chicago at the Bears’ training camp. He uploaded Instagram Story footage of the NBC broadcast on Sunday, writing, “We locked in. … No words. Let’s go, baby.”
The gymnast became a fan favorite during the 2016 Olympics in Rio, winning four gold medals and one bronze medal. When she returned to the stage for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, which took place in the summer of 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she suffered from the “twisties,” a condition that caused her to become disoriented in the air while performing tricks. She ultimately withdrew from several events to focus on her mental health but still earned a silver and bronze medal.
In April, Biles reflected on the experience, revealing that she tried to overcome the setback to finish out the competition on a high note.
“In the back [gym], we already knew my gymnastics was kind of janky,” she explained on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast at the time. “In training, I was having the twisties already, but I’m trying to push past that. I would literally tell the team … ‘I’m fighting demons. I’m fighting demons right now, but I’m going to do it for you guys.’ I literally felt like I was fighting my body and my mind to do these tricks.”
After the Tokyo Olympics, Biles took a two-year break from competing, though she resumed her training in September 2022.
“I wish I could sit here and tell you it was glorious,” she recalled in her February Vanity Fair cover story. “When I took a break after 2016, I had the time of my life. I was doing anything and everything. But after 2020, it was kind of depressing until I started therapy and got help. I felt like a failure. Even though I was empowering so many people and speaking out about mental health, every time I talked about my experience in Tokyo — because it obviously didn’t go the way that I had planned — it stung a little bit. But all in all, it was the best decision.”
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Despite the ordeal, Biles made a major comeback to competitive gymnastics in August 2023. She told NBC Sports at the time that it “felt really good” to get back on the mat, and the support from fans “made my heart melt that they still believe in me.”
She continued: “After everything that transpired in Tokyo, I took a lot [of time and] I worked on myself. I still do therapy weekly and it’s just been so exciting to come out here and have the confidence I had before that after everything that happened. … I feel like I lost a part of [having widespread support] sometimes and to come back here and do what I did tonight and have that support from the fans and everybody watching, I just couldn’t thank them enough.”
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Biles, who said that she “always” hoped to continue competing after Tokyo, added that she “worked a lot on myself and I believe in myself a little bit more.”
Biles documented her path to the 2024 Olympics in the Netflix docuseries Simone Biles Rising, which premiered on July 17. “I knew it would be a long journey,” she said in the trailer. “But to me, it wasn’t done.”
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