On Sunday night, Simone Biles made history once again, defying physics, gravity and precedent by becoming the oldest female gymnast to make an Olympic team in 72 years. In the first tumbling pass of her floor routine, the 27-year-old launched herself 12 feet in the air, a superhuman spectacle that sent fans and commentators into raptures, including NBC Olympics reporters who gushed on X that Biles was “LITERALLY LAUNCHING INTO SPACE.”
With its unique blend of high-stakes drama, gravity-defying physical feats, and chase-your-dream story arcs, it’s no mystery why women’s artistic gymnastics is among the most watched Olympic sporting events. The audience is held captive by two distinct emotions: the breathless tension of waiting for an athlete to land a skill and the utter astonishment at their superhuman capabilities if they do.
Today, there isn’t a single aspect of the sport of gymnastics that she hasn’t impacted in some way.
Biles’ gobsmacking performance and spectacular career also serve as a reminder that the sport is still grappling with the darker side of ambition and the determination to constantly push one’s limits.
One historic moment in particular captured the sport’s high stakes and even higher expectations: gymnast Kerri Strug’s second vault at the 1996 Olympic Games.
As the legend goes, the hotly contested team final was drawing to a close, with Russia right on Team USA’s tail, and one event to go. After injuring her ankle on the first vault, 19-year-old Strug limps away, visibly stricken with pain and terror. The stadium is breathless with anticipation and pre-emptive heartbreak. Then, in one of the most made-for-television scenes in Olympic history, she returns to the mat and takes off for her second vault, sticking the landing on one foot. Her face shrivels in agony as the crowd goes wild, and she is carried off in the arms of her coach, Bela Karolyi. The heroic vault not only helped Team USA clinch their first-ever gold medal, but also landed Strug talk show appearances, a Sports Illustrated cover, a meeting with President Bill Clinton and the inevitable feature on a Wheaties cereal box.
Less than a year after Strug’s triumphant vault, Biles was born. Today, there isn’t a single aspect of the sport of gymnastics that she hasn’t impacted in some way. As the most decorated gymnast of all time, the 30-time world medal winner currently has five skills named after her in the sport’s Code of Points.
In 2021, after Biles decided to withdraw from the Tokyo Olympic Games citing her mental health, some members of the gymnastics community revisited Strug’s legendary vault. The verdict was nearly unanimous: It did not age well.
Biles’ decision sparked an ongoing conversation about the safety and well-being of athletes in a sport where pushing your body to the physical limits of human potential tends to be the norm, rather than the exception.
“I’ve already seen comments and posts about how Biles ‘failed her country,’ ‘quit on us,’ or ‘can’t be the greatest if she can’t handle the pressure,’” one viral Facebook post read at the time. “Those statements are no different than Coach Karolyi telling an injured teen with wide, frightened eyes: ‘We got to go one more time. Shake it out.’ The subtext here is: ‘Our gold medal is more important than your well-being.’”
The renewed debate signaled that the culture of women’s gymnastics had changed dramatically in the last 27 years. First, there’s the unprecedented dominance of the United States women’s team. Since 1996, they’ve earned an astonishing seven consecutive team medals at the Olympic Games and nine gold medals at world championships. The sport has also endured massive scandals, including the conviction of disgraced former USA Gymnastics doctor, Larry Nasser, and the major shakeup to the sport’s leadership that followed.
The revelations about gymnastics’ toxic culture, coupled with the most dominant athlete in U.S. gymnastics history deciding to step aside to prioritize her mental health, seem to at least suggest a more positive and safe environment for athletes.
But watching this year’s U.S. Olympic Team trials, the shadow of Strug’s pain-enduring grimace seemed to be everywhere. On Day 1, dozens of competitors suffered wobbles, falls and injuries. It’s not because they’re lousy athletes — they’re unquestionably the best of the best. It’s because gymnastics is a mental battlefield, and all its players are in the line of fire. Commentators often describe this phenomenon as a competition “curse.” Once one athlete goes down, the spell becomes contagious.
Even Biles isn’t immune. Although her spot on Team USA is all but guaranteed, the 27-year-old nearly fell off the balance beam at the start of her routine on Day 1, despite being a four-time world champion in the event. She made no secret of how she felt about this.
Fortunately, Biles has such a comfortable lead over her competitors that she could have completely fallen off the beam — and did, in fact, during Sunday’s finals — and still earned a spot on the team. Some of her fellow Olympic hopefuls weren’t as lucky. In the first 30 minutes of NBC’s broadcast, Kayla DiCello was taken away in a wheelchair in tears. Another fan favorite, Shilese Jones, struggled through her bars routine before pulling out of the trials altogether. With insurmountable pain written on her face, the camera emphatically cut away to her mother, who was sitting in the audience, also in tears.
The abundant display of emotions underscores just how young the athletes are; many have yet to graduate high school.
The abundant display of emotions underscores just how young the athletes are; many have yet to graduate high school. For most of them, going to the Olympics has been their dream since the time they learned to walk. Nearly all of their families made enormous sacrifices for them to be here. The pressure they’re feeling is about more than gaining Instagram followers or endorsement deals.
With the help of role models like Biles, gymnasts trying out for the Olympics today are given more space to push back against unrealistic pressure from a toxic culture that puts the team’s success over their individual well-being.
These young athletes are claiming more ownership over their dreams and doing it for themselves. And somehow, that makes it all the more heartbreaking when we witness a fall, a missed step, a painful injury.
Ironically, it’s this very pressure each athlete puts on themselves that makes women’s gymnastics so compelling to watch. The gut-wrenching agony of falls, slips and injuries reflects a crucial paradox about gymnastics: It makes the sport patently unwatchable, and at the same time, impossible to turn away from.
While a certain amount of injuries and hardship is expected in any sport, it doesn’t make it any easier to watch athletes grimace through the pain of pushing their bodies to the outer limits of human capability. But 27 years after Strug’s heroic vault turned a toxic precedent into an immortal legacy, we can only hope that Biles’ unparalleled influence on the sport will help convey the message that your well-being is worth much more than a gold medal — or your face on a box of Wheaties.