If Simone Biles has taught us anything over the last decade, it is to reframe the way we think and talk about star athletes, to refuse the instinctive deification that is really also a form of dehumanisation. Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian
The loge boxes and the VIP seats lie empty for most of the morning. After all, this is precious croissant and champagne time, and nobody wants to waste it on gymnasts no one has heard of. A few minutes before the start of the second subdivision, they shuffle out of the lounges and executive suites and down the steps, pursued by the flashing red dots of a thousand phone cameras.
We have Tom Cruise and Snoop Dogg. We have Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. We have John Legend and Chrissy Teigen, Greta Gerwig and Jessica Chastain, the Jonas Brothers, the now-ubiquitous Anna Wintour, whose main leisure activity these days seems to be sitting in the front row of blue-chip sporting events with an austere expression, like a woman being dragged to watch her nephew’s nativity play.
Needless to say, they are not here to watch Kaylia Nemour of Algeria nail a sensationally difficult routine and position herself as a gold-medal favourite in the uneven bars. Nor are they here to watch the Becky Downie comeback tour, insofar as they are even aware it exists. Instead, the Olympic gymnastics qualification has simply been reimagined as a waypoint on the flourishing Paris social scene: Nadal and Alcaraz on Saturday night, Biles on Sunday morning, drinks reception in the afternoon. They’re here to see “Ready For It? (Simone’s Version)”. Baby, let the Games begin!
Two storeys below, in the pit of the Bercy Arena, the greatest gymnast in history is deep in discussion. Coaches and medical staff are pointing at her left calf and ankle, which are thick with strapping. A camera operator hovers over her like a raven. We hear little snatches of conversation. She says: “like a fucking tear”. And then: “I could literally feel it, though.” And then: “It hurts so bad to push off.” In between rotations she limps and sits, grimaces and smiles. Like she is being pulled in two different directions, between the Simone everyone wants her to be, and the Simone she feels like.
We’re two disciplines in, and already Biles has given the capacity crowd everything they came for. A grand entrance. A dazzling beam routine, complete with the double somersault dismount with a double twist that a lot of gymnasts struggle to perform on the floor. Next comes the floor, and as she approaches the most physically demanding of the four exercises there are palpable nerves in the Team USA camp. Up in the stands, her former teammate Aly Raisman folds her hands to her mouth in silent prayer.
Everyone saw what happened three years ago. The withdrawals, the circus that chased her around Tokyo and all the way home, the struggles with mental health that had to be played out publicly because no alternative was available to her. A month after Tokyo, she appeared in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee to give evidence against the sexual abuser Larry Nassar. It was two years before she returned to competition, and for all the new tricks and skills something more elemental had changed within her. No longer would she allow herself to be trapped by external forces. If Rio was for the glory, and Tokyo for the expectation, Paris is for her.
Nobody is forcing her to be here. No executive or sponsor or internet troll will ever motivate Biles more than she can motivate herself. There is a moment in her groundbreaking floor routine when she raises her fist and smashes it downwards: an act of violence, an act of refusal, but also an act of emancipation. Or as her choreographer Grégory Milan explained to the New York Times: “I am breaking my aquarium, I am taking my freedom and I am not letting anyone hurt me any more.”
And of course she nails the floor routine, lands the Yurchenko double pike on the vault, follows it up with the straight somersault with 1½ twists, sails through to the all-around final with another entry on the all-time points list. Sometimes, she wobbles a little. Sometimes, she takes an extra steadying step. Even her stumbles seem graceful. Because if Biles has taught us anything over the last decade, it is to reframe the way we think and talk about star athletes, to refuse the instinctive deification that is really also a form of dehumanisation. To stop demanding perfection and miracles as a condition of our love. Biles is perfect, because she isn’t.
The circus will carry on screaming around her. Her face will continue to sell premium hospitality packages the world over. Celebrities will swan in and swan out, gawping and leering, desperate to bathe in her reflected glory, hooking themselves to her fleeting cultural capital like junkies. But she alone knows what it took to get here, she alone knows what it means to be here, and even in the grand, grotesque, billion-dollar content fayre of big sport, she alone will define her power. Her talent. Her body. Her story. Her rules.
