Simone Biles’ much-anticipated return to the Ariake Gymnastics Center proved worth the wait. Following a solid, though a scaled-down version of her balance beam routine, she earned 14.0 points—good for the bronze medal. Ahead of her were Chinese gymnasts Guan Chenchen, who won the gold, and Tang Xijing, who took silver.
Biles competed for the first time at the Tokyo Summer Olympics after pulling out of the first five scheduled gymnastics events to prioritize her mental well-being. Feeling the mounting pressures of expectations leading up to Tokyo, Biles said she needed to take a “mental break” and reset her mind and body before continuing.
Her performance was classic Biles—confident, solid and impressive. Missing was the spectacular dismount named after her, a potentially dangerous double-twisting double flip, but her execution was enough to earn 14.0 points, which put Biles in second with five more competitors to go. She held that position until the very last gymnasts when she was knocked down to third.
The new dismount was likely triggered by the fact that since withdrawing from the earlier events, Biles has posted on her social media that she has been experiencing the twisties, a condition in which gymnasts lose their orientation in the air and can’t control how much their body twists, or how they land.
That makes Biles’ gravity-defying tumbling runs on the floor, her difficult vaults, and her dismount from the uneven bars potentially dangerous, so she decided not to compete in those events and also chose to perform a less difficult dismount on the beam.
