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The perfect imperfection of Simone Biles

2021-07-25T17:53:41.489Z


The American gymnast leads, as usual, the individual qualification, but her disconcerting performance does not reach the usual level. By teams, Russia is superior to the United States


Ariake gymnastics room.

It looks like a newly opened nightclub.

Sunday morning.

The party is over and it has left no residue. Arched ceiling, wooden steps, platforms and tapestries. Echo. A sterilized operating room with disco music and strobe lights that disturb the surgeon, but his hands will never sweat: the air conditioning has such freezing intensity, hyper-frozen corridor level, that not a single drop pearls an inch of skin. It does not smell like spilled vats, strawberry air freshener, or stale vomit. The ground is not sticky with rum and coke or dangerous with broken glass. Only memories remain of the dense Saturday night. Sounds that the absence of an audience multiplies. They all act in shared intimacy. Stunts and stunts. Bar to the left, colt in front, ground in the center, asymmetrical to the right. Olympic Games Tokyo 2020. Year of the pandemic.

Only the entertainers at the microphone and through the loudspeakers seem to take it as seriously as the gymnasts, their sparkling disco costumes, their tense muscles, ready to express everything they have been rehearsing for five years.

It is their moment.

Until Simone Biles enters, and her companions behind, red and gold stars, without bars, in her blue leotard, and many glitters, and the world stops.

The pavilion is filled with noises that silence the agitated voices, screeching, of colleagues or coaches who guide gymnasts on the asymmetric or on the balance beam.

The stands are suddenly filled with coaches, more gymnasts from other countries, until then indifferent in their affairs.

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A camera is nailed, permanently, in the colodrillo of the North American woman, who knows that from that second she must take care of every gesture she makes, every face of boredom, indifference, concern, as she takes care of her words, each time more steely, more direct, clearer, when he talks about the issues that matter, the

#Metoo

of the abuses of Larry Nassar, the doctor of his country's national team, the

Black Lives Matter,

Black Proud,

anyone else.

The camera that flies over his head is a weight that he carries on his shoulders, on a clavicle in which he has just tattooed, that is what the

New York Times says,

a verse by Maya Angelou,

“and still I rise”,

"And I still rise", and jumps to the central tapestry, the floor, and freed from the weight of the camera, free in the air, gets up, and gets up in two perfect diagonals, a whirlwind of complicated movements at such speed and Ature that seems to be transported by the typhoon that is announced for Tuesday in Tokyo, so it flies, double back somersault enlivened with several turns, but it does not land in the light rectangle, but in the dark blue frame, out of bounds. The mistake makes Italian Vanessa Ferrari happy, first on the ground in qualifying, who at age 30, and after overcoming a broken Achilles, will be able to say to the world: I beat Biles on the ground, and with music by Bocelli.

It is the beginning of a puzzling gymnastics afternoon. Biles is not the perfect Biles, but even her imperfection, it could be said like this, is perfect, outstanding. They are failures of excess energy, of vitality, perhaps of competitive madness. She enters Yurchenko's trampoline at 25 per hour, with a round, and with a half turn for her Cheng, she propels herself on the rack up to more than 2.5 meters high, and leaves so shot that after a mortal in plank and turn and a half it lands a meter or two further than its competitors, and so hard that it comes off the mat and tells the world about it with a

buff

What have I done? That says it all, but nails his second jump, an Amanar, entry into Yurchenko and extended mortal with two and a half turns, and leaves the world expectant, and eager that in the team final, the Tuesday, I gave him his own Yurchenko, the one with the two deadly carps, so dangerous that no one dares to do it.

His exit from the bar fails - after an exercise in which he achieves the miracle that was only within the reach of the tightrope walkers between two towers of a cathedral, for example, awakening at the same time the extreme fear of an inevitable and painful fall and, at the same time, the assurance that whoever does it knows so much that falling is impossible, and it is a stimulating and beautiful feeling - because it is so revolutionized that when it lands, it makes the gesture of someone who thought the ground was lower than where it was. was actually. It is the bronze apparatus in Rio, in which she wobbled, the one she most wants to tame to perfection because she believes that if she fails she is failing everyone.

"I was nervous," explains Tom Forster, the head of the North American team, who is looking, perhaps in vain, for a rational explanation for the confusion. "They were off-center, she and her companions." None of them stops in the mixed zone after a day in which, all agree, they have been below the level that was expected. Although Biles and her partner Sunisa Lee, along with the Belgian Nina Derwael, the world champion, of the great magic of the asymmetric, the only imperfect apparatus of Biles, led the general classification, by teams Russia, cleaner, with more Squad depth, finished ahead of the United States by more than one point. And the United States has three Games in a row, from Beijing, winning gold.

Another job for Biles, also classified for the final four by apparatus, who also continues to grow in imperfection, but loses a real vision of what she could be in 22 years, at 46, like Oksana Chusovitina, who, when Biles has already left, he jumps for the last time, he has promised, in the Olympic Games. Olympic champion with the unified team (former Soviet Union) in Barcelona 92, Chusovitina, 10 world medals, competes for Uzbekistan, and wears an eight on the chest of her green leotard, like the Games she has played, and, after doing so ( and not so bad, the 12th ends), she says goodbye to everyone, throwing kisses to the empty stands and, above all, to her fellow gymnasts, who immediately abandon their efforts and applaud her, and there is more commotion in the pavilion than with Biles . Everyone applauds except the judgesit's natural, and cries Chusovitina, who has a 23-year-old daughter, older than many of the rivals, and wild Soviet eyebrows, and the green, white blue nails of the Uzbek flag. And all the gymnasts, her daughters could be, they run to take pictures with her, excited. Nobody wants to lose it, like Biles, of course.

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Source: elparis

All sports articles on 2021-07-25

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