After staggering off the mat in Paris, Biles and his team of coaches and medical experts had to make a big decision with little time on their hands. Will he continue to compete, or will he similarly withdraw from the Olympics (and face backlash)? Will he be able to overcome the “ups and downs” and qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics? Biles considered it an unwelcome “déjà vu” moment. “Hmm. It was very annoying. And I think that’s what annoyed me the most,” she recalled. “As soon as I got off the floor, I thought, ‘They’re going to think I’m quitting again.’
And she wasn’t willing to let it happen. So she spent the rest of her time in Paris straddling the line between preparedness and overkill. Coaches monitored her stretches, she wore a compression sleeve on her calf, and Team USA Gymnastics physician Dr. Marcy Faustin helped manage her pain, but thankfully her symptoms remained intact throughout the remainder of the competition. It never got worse. Her coach, Laurent Landy, eventually told the cameras that Biles was diagnosed with a “tear” in her calf.
While the extent of the injury may have come as a surprise to Netflix viewers, Biles wasn’t necessarily shocked. At 27, she joked that she was “old for a gymnast” and that her body was a “ticking time bomb”. She also revealed that she suffered several minor injuries while training for Paris, including a hyperextended knee and a strained calf. Yes, it was in the exact same spot where I tore it during qualifying. But the second time was even worse. “For the most part, I can still walk normally and do everything,” she explained while undergoing physical therapy. “I could clearly feel my calves with every punch and takeoff,” she later recalled. “But we have so much going on that we can’t focus on that.”
Somehow, Biles was able to push the pain to the back of her mind and focus on her performance. That’s exactly what her coach and participation in what she calls “religious” therapy inspired her to do. She uses a mental health technique called visualization (thinking of soothing images, such as the sights and sounds of a beach) to calm herself down if she’s “troubled” during a competition. He explained that it was “really helpful.” “I knew physically I could do it,” she added as her long-awaited return to the Olympics approached. “The difficult thing for me was whether I could endure it mentally.”
As we all know, Biles left Paris victorious, winning three gold medals (team all-around, individual vault, and individual all-around) and one silver medal (individual floor). “I really tried to enjoy every moment,” she said of the trip. “But we took it one day at a time, and I’m grateful for that.”
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