Olympic gymnasts benefit from emphasis on mental health — Suni Lee wins the internet

Raise your hand(s) if you have been personally victimized by the Olympic balance beam final. 

Chaos reigned on the last day of competition, and if it weren’t for having to watch Ana Barbosu* of Romania slowly realize that she had not, in fact, received a bronze medal on floor on live television, I would say that it was the ending this particular meet deserved. Things were just getting wrapped up so nicely! Redemption everywhere! And then the beam reminded us who was boss. 

And what I have loved seeing in Paris is that the gymnasts are, for the most part, able to react and process in the moment instead of being forced to shove all their emotions in a jar. Real, adult emotions were on display throughout the Olympics. Credit the culture change, credit more attention to mental health, credit the runaway box office success of Inside Out 2 — whatever it is, it’s terrific. 

I think this Olympics, in general, is showing how much performance benefits from good mental health, and athletes’ openness about pursuing mental health treatment. This extends beyond just gold medal performance — I think when performance goes bad, in fact, is when we’re seeing the greatest effects. See: the aforementioned balance beam final. We saw gymnasts upset, but we saw them still able to support one another, congratulate those who made it to the podium, and speak thoughtfully about it afterwards.

Simone Biles spoke about the atmosphere in the arena and its effect on her performance and that of other athletes — the lack of music that they requested to fill what she called an eerie silence, the audience shushing gymnasts who were cheering teammates, cameras in their faces. She didn’t lay blame, but she said it in a way that likely means we won’t see and hear those things during a competition again. A testament to Biles’ power within the sport, sure, but even a few years ago we never heard about external stressors during competitions. 

And for an Olympic sport, we saw a lot of Olympic pressure off these gymnasts during the Paris Games. The Olympics no longer seems like a make-or-break competition for most of them. Certainly it is for smaller federations who gain funding through results, and certainly it will remain the pinnacle of the sport in many ways — but the individual pressure on athletes seemed greatly relieved in Paris. Perhaps in a time of fraught politics in so many places around the world, the emphasis on camaraderie and friendship seemed more noticeable, but I do also think that movements like the #gymnastalliance and #metoo handed some power back to these athletes that they had been lacking before. 

It’s about time. I’m eager to see where we go from here. 

*I’m not going into great detail about the Romanian uproar over that floor final here, at least not this week. But I know it’s in the background of a lot of what I discussed above. 

Other gym news

I wrote a piece for Bleacher Report discussing Simone Biles’ legacy in the sport of gymnastics. 

College Gym News rates the Paris leotards! CGN also discusses the American NCAAers’ individual medals. And they give us an update on the proposed changes coming to NCAA gymnastics. 

The Gymternet has a list of all the women’s gymnastics records broken at the Paris Games. 

Rebeca Andrade didn’t perform the triple-twisting Yurchenko in Paris, but she is letting us know it’s still there, waiting to happen.  

Jordan Chiles rang the closing bell at NASDAQ this week after returning Stateside. 

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