Biles didn’t stop to talk. Instead she kept stride with her U.S. teammates as they walked past all credentialed media, Biles more gingerly than the others. Still, she smiled and waved. Most reporters didn’t reciprocate, instead keeping their gaze on her leg.
Is she okay? Was that a hitch? Are her pants making so much noise because she’s struggling to walk?!
Three years ago, it was Biles’s mind. Now the concern focused on her calf.
Biles created the most unforgettable scene of the zombie Olympics in Tokyo when she walked away from her first vault, her lips pursed and eyes flushed with fear. The lasting image from Sunday might be of Biles crawling — yes, literally crawling.
“She felt a little something in her calf, but, um, yeah, that’s all,” Cecile Landi, Biles’s coach, said, answering the first of many questions about Biles’s health.
Landi said Biles started feeling “a little pain in her calf” before her floor routine. That’s when the energy in the building shifted at the opening chords of distortion from Taylor Swift’s “… Ready For It?” Like every other awestruck fan in the packed arena, Tom Cruise, Snoop Dogg, Ariana Grande and Anna Wintour stared at the floor. The A-listers didn’t need to legitimize this moment. A master was about to begin, and all eyes were on her.
With her leg wrapped, Biles made her first pass, twisting, tucking, launching herself skyward to superhuman heights and then stumbling a bit out of bounds. She finished the routine — with “unbelievable difficulty,” the public address announcer informed the crowd, a reference to the demands of the skills. However, she rested on the top step and spoke with one of her coaches.
Asked whether there had been any consideration of Biles not continuing, Landi responded: “Never in her mind. No.”
But soon, after her warmup vaults, a strange sight: The master couldn’t even walk. She was crawling on all fours, dragging her body along the Paris 2024 logo, then rising to her feet and hopping on her right leg.
Landi gave a nothing-to-see-here vibe while providing a medical update before eventually shutting down further inquiries by telling reporters: “I will not be answering any more questions about her calf. If you want to talk about the whole team, I’ll be happy to tell you.”
But USA Gymnastics technical lead Chellsie Memmel did not mask her unease. When asked whether she wondered about Biles continuing on through the final two rotations, Memmel answered, “I did.”
Like Cruise and Snoop and everyone else in the building, Memmel surely witnessed the shaky moment down the runway. The G.O.A.T. crawling like a baby. However, Biles continued.
She waited for her turn, sitting placidly at the end of the row of seats, three empty spaces between her and the team doctor as teammate Jade Carey completed her two vaults. When Biles sat up, cameras zoomed in. On the overhead scoreboard, we could see the white on her toenails, even the scrunch on her face for reasons only she would know.
Then, as another country’s gymnast began her floor routine with the dramatic intro of a Fall Out Boy song, Biles sprinted down the runway. No limp, no quirk in her gait, only a powerful stride. She performed a Yurchenko double pike but needed a big step back to catch herself. That left leg, soon to be most important appendage in Paris, stabilizing her.
Biles completed a second vault, then concluded the competition on the uneven bars. Overall, she earned a score of 59.566, well on her way to qualifying for the all-around final and capping a storybook comeback. In 2021, Biles could not be herself. She felt disoriented while flipping in the air, so she withdrew from the all-around competition. Protecting her mental health proved to be a greater priority than seeking yet another gold medal.
The average sports fan might understand a strained calf more than a bruised mind — especially considering the atmosphere three years ago, when in some circles Biles faced criticism for “quitting.” However, just like in Tokyo, Biles is “playing hurt.” It’s the same sirens for alarm wailing through Team USA, but now Biles must overcome a physical ailment.
Asked whether she was concerned, Memmel said, “I am, but I’m going to talk to her.
“I haven’t even gotten [a chance] to speak to Simone. I need to speak to our team, our medical team, so I don’t have an answer about that. First and foremost, I want to make sure she’s physically okay, and then we’re just going to go from there.”
Memmel faced reporters minutes after the U.S. gymnasts had completed their silent walk-through. In this pointless formality for the gymnasts to at least appear in front of media, all five Americans made a sharp right turn, then walked on the other side of the closed-off area and toward the backstage of Bercy Arena. No comments. Just swishhh swishhh swishhh.
Biles remained mum even as a man tried to get a response by applauding. Then the crew went away, out of sight. As she turned the corner, Biles appeared to have a slight limp. Probing eyes followed that lower leg. She walked past them all and into the first moment of uncertainty of these Paris Olympics.
