Photo: Saul Loeb – Pool / Getty Images
By: EFE
Thursday, October 31
“No matter how much I try to forget, it is a continuous job”: Simone Biles revealed that she cannot overcome her traumas
“ I just want a doctor to tell me when I’m going to get over this” , has stated the American gymnast Simone Biles , in therapy after withdrawing from the competition due to psychological problems during the past Tokyo Games, which, he admits, he should have “given up.”
“They operate on you and it fixes. Why can’t someone tell me that in six months this will be over? “, he wonders about his own mental health in an interview with the website of the magazine ‘New York’.
Biles, who is currently participating in an exhibition tour but has not resumed training, an adventure that “probably” will have to deal with his problems “during 20 years”.
“It doesn’t matter how much I try to forget. It is a continuous work ”, he adds.
Simone Biles and other elite gymnasts told senators that the system “enabled and perpetrated” Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse in emotional testimony on Wednesday. The FBI director apologized to the victims for the agency’s mishandling of the case. https://t.co/ 60 lKrTjjsr pic.twitter.com/aUNkO6Qy5G
– The New York Times (@nytimes) September 15, 2021
Simone Biles, winner of five Olympic medals at the Rio Games 2016 , revealed months later that he had been one of the victims of sexual abuse of Larry Nassar , the doctor of the American team.
“If you look at everything I’ve been through in the last seven years, should not have rejoined the Olympic team ”, says about his participation in the Tokyo Games. “I should have quit much earlier, when Larry Nassar was in the media for two years. It was too much. But I wasn’t going to let him take something I’ve worked for since I was 6 years old. I wasn’t going to let that joy take away from me. So I got over it to the extent that my mind and body allowed me ”.
However, when he arrived in Japan his wish passed “from wanting to be on a podium to wanting go home “.
” In the moments before, I got more and more nervous, ”she says. “I did not feel as safe as I should with all the training we had, ”he says.
Biles participated in Tokyo in the qualifying round, but withdrew in the team final after doing only the jumping exercise, in which suffered an episode of disconnection between mind and body ; is what is known in gymnastic language as ‘twisties’.
“It was a miracle that I fell on my feet. Any other person would have left on a stretcher . As soon as I landed on that jump, I went and said to my coach: ‘I can’t continue’ ”, he recalls.
After skipping the individual, floor, jump and asymmetric finals in the following days, participated in the bar with an exercise modified with the one that won the bronze medal.
“I was not physically able,” he says in the interview. “Every time we tried, my body would say, ‘Simone, calm down. Sit down. We do not do it’. And I had never experienced that. ”
The gymnast compares her physical inability to do her pirouettes now with a loss of vision.
“One morning you wake up and you don’t see shit, but people tell you to go ahead and do your daily work like you still have vision. You would be lost, right? I wear 18 years doing gymnastics. I woke up and had lost it. How am I supposed to go about my day? “, he wonders.
Biles expresses his wish that everything was as easy as changing batteries : “Where are the batteries? Can we put them back? We can go?”.
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