Simone Biles Headlines A U.S. Women’s Gymnastics Team Eyeing Redemption At The Paris Olympics

Minneapolis — They all had a motive to return. Every one of them.

Simone Biles must move past those agonizing two weeks in Japan three years ago, when the gymnastics sensation chose her mental health and safety over glory, inspiring some but infuriating others.

Suni Lee wanted to prove — maybe most importantly to herself — that the all-around gold medal she won while Biles watched from the stands was not a fluke.

Jordan Chiles hopes to turn the team silver she helped secure at the 2020 Games into gold.

SImone Biles | AP News Image

Simone Biles Headlines A U.S. Women’s Gymnastics Team Eyeing Redemption At The Paris Olympics

Jade Carey will be an official member of the five-woman Olympic squad after qualifying as an individual qualifier, a route not open to the United States this time and one she has no desire to pursue again.

They’re all reclaiming the one-of-a-kind spotlight that only the sport’s largest stage can deliver, including 16-year-old newbie Hezly Rivera.

Their reasons are quite personal. However, their motivation is not clear.

“This is definitely our redemption tour,” Biles said after winning the U.S. trials on Sunday night, securing her third Olympic appearance. “I feel like we all have more to give.”

Perhaps no one more than Biles, who, at 27, is the oldest American woman to make an Olympic gymnastics squad since 1950. She never expected to be doing this nearly a decade after becoming a crossover sensation in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

So here she is—still working, still pushing—not to silence the detractors who continue to bombard her social media mentions, asking if she will “quit” again, but because she is motivated to get the most out of her extraordinary skills.

“Nobody’s forcing me to do it,” said Biles, who won the all-around with a two-day total of 117.225, about six points more than Lee. “Every day, I get up and decide to work hard in the gym and perform for myself. I just wanted to assure myself that I could still do it.”

And do it at a level that no one else in her sport—or, when she’s at her peak, sports in general—can match.

A trip to France has never been in doubt since Biles returned from a two-year absence last summer. All she’s done in the previous 12 months is win her sixth global all-around title and her eighth and ninth national titles — both records — despite performing the most difficult gymnastics of her career.

She will be a prohibitive favorite when she goes onto the Bercy Arena floor, but there is still much work to be done before women’s qualifying on July 28. However, some items need to be cleaned up during the following four weeks.

Biles backpedaled after landing her Yurchenko double pike vault, demonstrating both the difficulty of the vault and the incredible power she creates while performing a move that few male gymnasts attempt and even fewer accomplish as cleanly.

She leaped off the beam after failing to land her side aerial, but she wasn’t as furious as she had been on Friday when she uttered an expletive in front of the entire globe.

Biles finished with a flourish in the floor exercise, her signature event. Though there was a little trip out of bounds, there was also unrivaled world-class tumbling, which just earned a shoutout from pop artist Taylor Swift, whose song “Ready For It” opens Biles’ routine.

She stepped down the podium to a standing ovation before sitting atop the steps to take in the occasion in what could be her final competitive round on American soil for quite some time. Perhaps ever.

Biles avoided questions about what lies ahead. That can wait. It’s been a long, winding trek back to this point. She intends to enjoy it while being part of a team with “a lot of weight on our shoulders.”

She believes she and her teammates are better prepared to manage it.

“It’s really nice that Tokyo gave us that opportunity to open up that stage for that talk,” Biles informed the crowd. “And so I think now athletes are a little bit more in tune and we just trust what our gut is saying.”

And Biles’ instincts told her that if she wanted to return, she had to do so on her terms. That entailed taking deliberate steps to ensure her life was no longer defined by her gymnastics.

She married Chicago Bears safety Jonathan Owens in the spring of 2023, and the couple is building a house in the northern Houston suburbs that they want to move into soon after Biles returns from Paris.

Biles travels to France as maybe the face of the United States Olympic movement, but she is well aware that more than a few of the millions who will tune in next month will be watching to see if the demons that wrecked her in Tokyo resurface.

Simone Biles | AP News Image

Simone Biles Headlines A U.S. Women’s Gymnastics Team Eyeing Redemption At The Paris Olympics

While she still experiences periods of fear, such as at last year’s world championships, she has taken precautions to protect herself. She sees a therapist weekly, even during competition season, something she did not do in preparation for the 2020 Games.

The Americans will send their oldest women’s team to the Games, thanks to Biles’ unrivaled longevity—she hasn’t lost a meet she’s started and finished since 2013—and the NCAA’s relaxation of name, image, and likeness rules, which allowed Carey (24), Chiles (23) and Lee (21) to continue competing while cashing in on their newfound fame.

They have relied on that experience over a sometimes tumultuous race, which saw leading competitors Shilese Jones, Skye Blakely, and Kayla DiCello withdraw with leg problems. Their problems kept them out of the running for weeks before they could realize a lifelong dream.

Watching good friends leave the arena in tears reminded me of how narrow the gap between success and failure can be. Biles has remained on the right side of that divide for longer than she imagined. She’ll attempt to enjoy it despite the pressure.

She might have gone ahead of herself in 2021. She is determined to prevent this from happening again.

“I feel like success is just what I make it,” she told me. I’ve been successful by competing in Olympic trials and reaching the Paris Olympic team. So we’ll see what happens from there.

SOURCE – (AP)