Simone Biles announced today that she will not compete in the individual event finals for vault and uneven bars, reports USA Today.
Although no reason was given for her withdrawal, she previously cited mental health issues for dropping out of the team competition and all-around individual competition.
In 2019, UCLA gymnastic sensation Katelyn Ohashi went through a similar journey.
Just a few months earlier, her routine on the floor exercise went viral and catapulted her into international stardom. It currently has 185 million views on YouTube.
Watching that routine still brings so much joy.
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Something terrible then began to take hold. She told ESPN she struggled with body image and an eating disorder.
“‘You don’t look like a gymnast. You look like you swallowed a pig,”‘ Ohashi recalls hearing people say. These were comments she began hearing as early as 14.
“It was so normalized,” Ohashi said to ESPN. “All the girls around me were going through the same thing…I was broken. Mentally, physically, emotionally. Everything you can imagine.”
A favorite to make the 2020 Tokyo Olympics for Team USA decided she would drop out of competitive gymnastics after her graduation in 2019. Today she is an advocate for mental health.
“This conversation of mental health is opening so many doors. It allows people to be like, ‘Oh, I’m not alone in this situation.’ It is OK to not be OK, and it is OK to talk about it. We all have stories that are worth sharing,” she said to USA Today.
Ohashi is scheduled to perform with both Olympians and non-elite gymnasts in the upcoming Gold American Tour beginning in September. Biles along with former UCLA teammates Danusia Francis and Peng-Peng Lee, as well as 2017 world champion Morgan Hurd are all scheduled to appear.
The tour won’t all be about gymnastics. According to USA Today, the tour will showcase who these woman are as people. All those currently on the tour are women of color, although more names are expected to be announced.
“At the end of the day, I think this should have been my path. I don’t think I have felt this type of happiness in a long time,” she told GoalCast.
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