Biles was selfish

No one was harsher on Biles decision than British commentator Piers Morgan. Hitting on her quote about ‘I feel like I’m also not having as much fun,” he writes for The Daily Mail: “You’re not just at these Games for yourself, Simone. You are part of Team USA, representing the United States of America, and hundreds of millions of American people watching back home, not to mention all the sponsors who’ve paid huge sums to support you.”

The decision was selfish, he says. “What exactly is so courageous, heroic or inspiring about quitting on your team and country in an Olympics?”

Biles was selfless

Biles was being selfless, Alexandra DeSanctis writes at National Review. She would have dragged down the USA team’s scores if she was really that off, and chose not to risk it. “It was a courageous and humble thing to do.”

. . . But her timing was off

Simon Biles performing the vault at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games on July 27, 2021.REUTERS/Lindsey Wasson/File Photo

Amber Athey at The Spectator says when Simone Biles decided to drop out presents a problem. If she had doubts she should have given up her spot earlier to someone else. And it seems unfair for her to participate in individual events next week. “Will the media and the US gymnastics team consider the effect that Biles’s withdrawal may have had on [her teammates] mental health?”
Gymnast Simone Biles decided to withdraw from the Women’s Team Final at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.REUTERS/Mike Blake

The ‘twisties’

It is mysterious what contributes to an talented athlete suddenly losing their ability, like a golfer who keeps shanking the ball. Gymnasts call it “the twisties,” slang for “her mind was stopping her physically from doing what she could normally do,” Louise Radnofsky and Andrew Beaton explain in the Wall Street Journal. It’s not just frustrating, it’s dangerous. “If a gymnast’s ankle isn’t working right, or her head is in the wrong place, and she flips at speed and it doesn’t work out, she can die.”
And importantly, “Biles could not just snap out of it.”
Simone Biles celebrating the Women’s Team Final silver medal with her teammates on July 27, 2021.Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images

Whatever you think, don’t celebrate quitting

It’s perfectly right for Biles to pull out of competition, especially if she thought she might hurt herself, Dan McLaughlin writes at National Review. But this shouldn’t be used as a broader lesson that if the going gets tough, quit.

“This is part of a broader tendency these days to medicalize our language and to celebrate victims and suffering rather than celebrating heroism, accomplishment, perseverance, and endurance. What a society chooses to glorify and encourage, it gets more of,” he writes.

“Because living, not withdrawing from it, is still the point of life.”