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Simone Biles at Tokyo's Ariake Gymnastics Center
Photo: DYLAN MARTINEZ / REUTERS
Gymnastics superstar Simone Biles said she shouldn't have participated in the Tokyo Olympics due to her mental health problems.
"If you look at what I've been through in the last seven years, I should never have belonged to an Olympic team again," Biles told New York Magazine: "I should have quit long before Tokyo."
Biles had abandoned the team's first competition after a failed jump at the Tokyo Games and then talked about mental problems.
As a result, she canceled further starts.
Instead of the targeted six gold medals, she won one silver and one bronze.
Immediately after leaving the team competition, she said in tears: “I no longer trusted myself.
I was so nervous.
I don't know that from me. ”Now Biles said in the interview that the scandal surrounding former team doctor Larry Nassar had taken a high emotional toll on her as a victim of sexual violence.
Nassar, 58, is serving a life sentence after pleading guilty to sexually abusing women and girls in late 2017 and early 2018 while serving as a sports medicine doctor at USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University (MSU).
"It was too much.
But I didn't want him to take something from me that I've worked hard for since I was six, "Biles said." So I've pushed that aside for as long as my mind and body let me. "
Biles now hopes to help remove the stigma surrounding mental health.
“I'll probably work on that for 20 years.
It's an ongoing process, ”she said.
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