Simone Biles got emotional while speaking about her changed relationship to gymnastics following both her Tokyo Olympics run and the abuse of Larry Nassar.
While appearing on NBC’s Today on Thursday to discuss her partnership with the health and telemedicine app Cerebral, Biles opened up to host Hoda Kotb about how she’s balancing being a public mental health advocate with her life as a gymnast on tour. Biles confirmed she’s been in therapy through Cerebral, and it’s been a significant benefit to her on the road performing in her Gold Over America Tour.
“Getting the mental health therapy that I need has been really relieving for me especially being on the road and being on tour,” she said. “So I’m really happy to have such a great app to help out with that.”
But Biles admitted that since the Olympics, aspects of her relationship to the sport have changed. When asked whether she’s still experiencing the twisties while out on the road, the gold medalist and U.S. athlete said she doesn’t do twists and instead performs her signature move — the double layout half out — in her floor routine. She went on to state that things are “just not the same” now and that she’s “still scared to do gymnastics.”
“To do something that I’ve done forever and just not be able to do it because of everything I’ve gone through is really crazy because I love this sport so much,” she said while tearing up. “I don’t think people understand the magnitude of what I go through, but for so many years to go through everything that I’ve gone through — put on a front — I’m proud of myself and I’m happy that I can be a leader for the survivors and bring courage to everybody speaking up.”
“To go through something like that and to be a voice for all of the survivors and people who want to come forward and talk about their stories, it’s really inspiring,” she added. “But it’s hard that I have to go through it because again people form their own opinions and I don’t really get to say what’s going on.”
During the interview, she also spoke about the impact of Larry Nassar’s abuse. Biles and three other U.S. gymnasts appeared in front of Congress in September to testify about Nassar’s decades of molestation and sexual assault of U.S. Olympic athletes under the guise of medical care. During her testimony, Biles not only blamed Nassar but pointedly USA Gymnastics, the U.S. Olympics Committee and the FBI as “an entire system that enabled and perpetrated his abuse.”
During her time in front of Congress, Biles made a connection between her performance in Tokyo and Nassar’s abuse, and when asked by Hotb whether she thought that had impacted her at all during the Tokyo Games, the young and decorated athlete confirmed that.
“After suppressing so many emotions and putting up a front on a global scene, I think, really all of that came to light,” she explained. “My body and my mind allowed me to suppress all of that stuff for so many years for as long as it could take and as soon as we stepped onto the Olympic scene it just decided it couldn’t do it anymore and it cracked.”
Source: Hollywood
