Simone Biles will not seek her second consecutive gold in the full contest

15.30, Tokyo time, seven hours less in Spain.

At the Fuji circuit, Tom Dumoulin starts the time trial of the Olympic Games.

The Dutch cyclist returns to racing after deciding at the beginning of the year that he could no longer bear the stress of always having to win, that he was not living, that his life weighed a ton on him.

In spring, with his girlfriend, he went to see races in the gutters, he wanted to compete again

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She's at the Games, she thinks she's recovered, and takes her first pedal strokes at the exact moment that the Associated Press releases a statement from the American Gymnastics Federation informing that Simone Biles will not defend her title of Olympic champion of the individual complete competition on Thursday. , the maximum title to which a gymnast can aspire, due to a mental health problem.

The media expectations will not be met, which before competing had already awarded Biles the victory, so much is the difference that separates him from the other gymnasts in the world.

She will not become the heir to the Soviet (Ukrainian) Larysa Latynina (Melbourne 1956 and Rome 1960) and the Czech Vera Caslavska (Tokyo 64 and Mexico 68, when the Soviet repression of the Prague Spring), the only two gymnasts who in Olympic history they repeated victory in two Games. However, she has achieved a victory over herself, perhaps, and has earned the respect and admiration of much of the sporting world for her decision to put her mental health ahead of possible successes counted in a ranking of medals that It only exists for society every four years. "We wholeheartedly support Simone's decision and applaud the courage she has had in putting her well-being first," the federation's statement ends.in which the election of the best gymnast in history is announced the day after withdrawing from the team final after feeling lost in the air in the jump of the colt. "His courage shows, once again, why he is a reference and a model for so many people."

Biles will be replaced in the final by his compatriot Jade Carey, who obtained the ninth place in qualifying and did not go to the final because only two can arrive per country.

The other American is Sunisa Lee.

Simone Biles, the woman who has changed everything

Winner of four gold and one bronze medals at Rio 2016, at age 19, Biles, who has revolutionized women's gymnastics in substance and form, came to Tokyo as a favorite to win up to six more medals. Her second retreat, which will probably be followed by those of the four apparatus finals of next Sunday, August 1 (colt and asymmetrical), Monday 2 (ground) and Tuesday 3 (balance beam), makes her the symbol more extraordinary, together with the crisis at Roland Garros of tennis player Naomi Osaka, of the excess that competitive sport has reached with its champions, and all of them need a team of psychologists and psychiatrists around them to survive.

Rebeca Andrade, the Brazilian gymnast who becomes the favorite to succeed Biles in the record, recently explained that she needs help from a psychologist since she was 13 years old and that every injury was almost a reason to suffer from depression and to wish to end a time with sports practice. Since 2013, the year that 16-year-old Biles won her first World Cup, and continued to win it all afterward, no gymnast has come close to being a world champion or an Olympian. Andrade, or Lee, or the Russian Angelina Melnikova, may be the herald of the new era.

North American 100m sprinter Trayvon Brommell tore his Achilles tendon running the relays in the Rio 2016 final. He left the stadium in a wheelchair. “In 2018”, two years later, he says, “I didn't see any reason to want to stay alive. I came to the sport thinking that it would save my life and I lost everything. He was surrounded by darkness. He was a shadow for the world ”. Brommell is in Tokyo 2020 the main favorite to succeed Usain Bolt in the Olympic 100m record.

Before getting lost in his jump Tuesday night, Biles wrote on Instagram that he thought the weight of the whole world was resting on his shoulders and that it was too hard to bear. After seeing, perhaps, in the air, flying, what his life was, Biles made an extraordinary and courageous decision, that of not continuing to harm his team, which finally won the silver medal defeated by Russia. "I can not continue. I'm not in the necessary mental space, ”he told his coach, Cecile Landi, and the team doctor, reveals the

New York Times.

"I am not mentally focused enough to perform my exercises safely."

He reaches such a height and such speed in his stunts that a slightest mistake can cost Biles a bad fall and a serious injury.

After the final was over, Biles said that since the start of the Games she had felt more and more stressed and that in the hours before the competition she was shaking so much that she couldn't even take a nap to relax.

So was the number one athlete in the United States, the cover of its magazines, the one that pulls the television audience, the face of the Games for millions of Americans.

At Rio 2016, Biles finished third on the balance beam, from which she nearly fell off. Her later comment was that she was frustrated not that she hadn't won the gold, but that she had somehow betrayed everyone who was confident she would. After her eclipse in the team competition, in the United States the networks and some media were inflamed, in which, mixed with racist and anti-feminist overtones, she was accused of being lazy and of having left her teammates in the lurch.

In his defense, voices and more voices began to rise. In a post that Simone Biles immediately retweeted, making it her own, Andrea Orris, a former Chicago gymnast and coach hell-bent on ending the “old gymnastics and sports culture” explains why Biles did what he had to do by retiring from competition . “People who call her fearful and traitorous are talking about the same girl who was abused by her doctor [Larry Nassar] throughout her childhood and adolescence, won a World Cup while suffering from a kidney stone, subjected her body to an extra year of training due to the pandemic and added so much difficulty to their exercises that the judges do not know how to assess them, or their talent, because they are far ahead of their time. And all this without resigning from any of his responsibilities as a person ”,writes the former gymnast. “That girl has endured more traumatic situations at the age of 24 than most people in her entire life. After all that, the fact that she decided to retire herself means that whatever is tormenting her inside has to be unbearable and taken very seriously. We can never know and understand their struggles and their internal choices. It does not deserve to be judged by anyone. First, because she is human, and, second, because after all she has done for her sport, all she has to put up with because of sport, and the joke of an organization [the North American federation] that protected its predator in instead of her and her companions ”.the fact that she herself decided to retire means that whatever is tormenting her inside has to be unbearable and taken very seriously. We can never know and understand their struggles and their internal choices. It does not deserve to be judged by anyone. First, because she is human, and, second, because after all she has done for her sport, all she has to put up with because of sport, and the joke of an organization [the North American federation] that protected its predator in instead of her and her companions ”.the fact that she herself decided to retire means that whatever is tormenting her inside has to be unbearable and taken very seriously. We can never know and understand their struggles and their internal choices. It does not deserve to be judged by anyone. First, because she is human, and, second, because after all she has done for her sport, all she has to put up with because of sport, and the joke of an organization [the North American federation] that protected its predator in instead of her and her companions ”.because after everything she has done for her sport, everything she has to put up with because of the sport, and the joke of an organization [the North American federation] that protected its predator instead of her and her teammates ”.because after everything she has done for her sport, everything she has to put up with because of the sport, and the joke of an organization [the North American federation] that protected its predator instead of her and her teammates ”.

Dumoulin won the silver medal and when he finished, he smiled and gave a good hug to the gold winner, the Slovenian Primoz Roglic, his partner in the Jumbo, who was reaching Olympic glory exactly one month after a fall that forced him to leave. the Tour without fighting with his compatriot Tadej Pogacar.

And they all laughed.

Then Dumoulin spoke: “I don't want to say anything about Simone Biles because I can't, I don't know enough to give an opinion, but, from my own experience, I can say that you can't perform at your best in a sport if you are not happy with yourself, if mentally you are not alright.

Sometimes the best thing is to step aside and ask yourself if you really like what you are doing. "

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