A beautiful imperfection by Simone Biles on the floor

It is almost ten o’clock in the evening, a time when most gymnastics girls are normally already in bed. Not tonight, in the packed Sportpaleis in Antwerp. And by far they are screaming the loudest for Simone Biles tonight.

Biles (26), the American gymnastics superstar, is working on her floor exercise. It is her international return, after she suffered from mental problems at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Biles is on course for gold in the all-around. Everything is going according to plan so far.

And then something strange happens. After three textbook acrobatic series – with such a satisfying, firm landing, neatly in the corner – things start to falter. Biles stumbles, flapping her arms. She almost falls over. Oooh, thousands of people in the stands are shocked at the same time. But it’s also funny. A bit of slapstick.

The great thing is that it immediately makes her laugh when she improvises her way to the corner with a few hops. She then performs her last acrobatic series seemingly effortlessly.

Unimaginable

Gymnastics is the pursuit of perfection: you start with a 10 for performance, and you get a deduction for every mistake.

As a sports journalist you are sometimes stuck in that pattern: what went wrong, you hear yourself asking an athlete who has just achieved something under immense pressure that is unimaginable to most people. Unimaginable, but not flawless. A fall from the beam, a landing outside the lines; you have to talk about it. So: what went wrong?

For Biles, always the towering favorite, that pursuit of perfection could be a burden. She didn’t want to disappoint anyone was America’s Sweetheart. Things always had to go well with her, both sportingly and personally. That is not realistic. Just take the fact that she was abused in her youth by the now convicted American team doctor Larry Nasser.

Biles still won the gold on floor that October day in Antwerp. That mistake wasn’t that decisive at all. But it was a beautiful imperfection. After Tokyo another memorya little one this time, that she too is only human.

Still a very remarkable person, of course: after the World Championships, where Biles won a total of four world titles, she will go home as the most successful gymnast of all time.

High expectations

That hunt for perfection, of course, also exists outside of gymnastics. And it takes quite a bit. Fortunately, the mental pressure of top sport, partly due to people like Biles, is increasingly discussed.

I also thought about it with Marrit Steenbergen. In front of the TV, in the editorial office, we saw this summer how Steenbergen (23) won bronze at the World Swimming Championships in Fukuoka, Japan. In the 100 meter freestyle, where the competition is fierce.

Steenbergen, a swimming prodigy, is also someone who suffered from perfectionism, the pressure of high expectations. She was not feeling well for a long time. In 2022 she found her way back to sport. Including after conversations with a psychologist. The crowning achievement was this World Cup medal, her first individual on the long track.

Or take judoka Sanne van Dijke (28): also not someone with low expectations of herself. In addition to her top sports career, she also wanted to graduate at an accelerated pace.

That was very difficult, she found out this year. She suffered from panic attacks, she said candidly. Although that never happened on the judo mat, she told me prior to the European Judo Championships in Montpellier. She took bronze, once again confirming her status as the most stable performing judoka of her generation.

Would you enjoy a medal more if you have also had setbacks as an athlete? This does apply to Marrit Steenbergen, her father said in a profile last year NRC. “She has experienced, through trial and error, that what she does is not very normal.”

And for Biles too, I think. In any case, she once said that her bronze in Tokyo on beam – the only final she competed in at those Games, in an easier version – was worth more than all her gold ones.

And a bad time can also be a good lesson in putting things into perspective, as I saw with Biles. Surrounded by journalists in the mixed zone, because everyone wants something from Simone Biles, she said in Antwerp that she is now trying to have a life outside of gymnastics. “For a long time, sports were pretty much all I had.”

Now, in her gymnastics-free months, she had suddenly done fun things with friends and family. That was very nice, she noticed. The realization dawned that she was more than just a gymnast. Her motto now: “Keep it normal.”

For what it’s worth, I saw this a while back a photo of Biles during Halloween, with a group of friends. “The only creepy thing about the evening,” she wrote, “were the tequila shots.”

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