TOKYO (AP) – Maybe Simone Biles made soaring through the air look too easy. It’s not – a fact she and other gymnasts who constantly negotiate with the laws of physics have long understood.
Every leap, no matter how routine, requires an innate sense of time and space. You have to know how many fractions of a second you have to make your body do what it needs to do. Just as crucially, you need to know you’ve got enough room to do it before the ground renders a verdict one way or another.
Simone Biles went undefeated for eight years. Gravity is forever-and-0.
Sometime after qualifying at the Tokyo Olympics on Sunday, the four-time Olympic gold medalist lost her way. She kept telling her body to twist. It kept saying, “How about no.”
The “twisties,” as they’re known within the gymnastics community, were back. And Biles knew it, leading her to withdraw from the team final after one rotation and skip the all-around final. She watched from the stands on Thursday as U.S. teammate and good friend Sunisa Lee claimed the gold.