Biles came back to enjoy gymnastics, but will gymnastics learn to enjoy Biles once and for all?

Was it a fantasy for journalists and fans, or would it really represent a complex challenge for the IOC to face the first Olympic game in the last two decades without icons like Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps and... Simone Biles?

For now, if this theory is somewhat credible, what happened days ago in the US Gymnastics Classic frees us from any kind of uncertainty.

At an age that seems advanced by the standards of women’s gymnastics from Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci to the present day, the most successful gymnast of all time assures us that, at least during the first week of competition, Paris 2024 will have its first major focus of individual attention while the sports world waits for new phenomena.

Simone Biles’ return to competition was another portrait along the lines of her gymnastic art. And this game of words related to art has to do with the ways of doing gymnastics and the ways of winning that this athlete has had since her emergence on the international level a decade ago: winning through great difficulty scores and winning by a wide difference. This trend, which has been sustained for so long, is her hallmark. There is a personal and original style in Simone Biles. While there is still an audience to be convinced, both in the general fan and in the specific fan of the discipline, the 26-year-old American gymnast reappeared after two years and won the US Classic by exactly five points difference over the second. She scored 59,100 points in the all around, while runner-up Leanne Wong reached 54,100 points.

It is true that there is the concept of home scoring or domestic overscore, an “agreement” in the gymnastics arbitration community in which inflation in scores is recognized within national or internal selective competitions to demonstrate power. For this reason, it is difficult to make absolute comparisons between tournaments because the execution notes, that is, those that evaluate the how and not the what of the routines, are very variable. It seems, incredibly, that a flexion of the elbows is penalized by more tenths in an International Federation competition (World Cup or Olympic Games) than in a national of the United States or Russia. Even if the judges are based on the same written regulation.

Regarding this issue of the various ways of applying deductions in the execution of the series, there is one last precedent in Tokyo 2020 in which there was a marked exaggeration in the “international” palate of deductions and Simone Biles was the most punished in this regard on the day of the qualifying competition. Because before the emotional collapse that led her to leave the team final to prioritize her mental health, Biles performed all four devices in the podium test and returned to performing all four devices on the day of the qualifying round. On both days, she managed to advance to absolutely all the finals, but the specialized conversation in the corridors of the Ariake Gymnastics Center in Tokyo and on social media was about her imperfect execution, far from the international beauty standards sought by the FIG Code. They deducted almost 2.5 points in the beam execution, in a series without falls. And the same thing happened on the floor, in a performance without serious flaws (and with the highest difficulty in history).

Some reading judges will talk about the complexity of discounting artistic presentation on these two devices, but what ideal of perfection do you aim for if Biles is 2.5 points below excellence?

It is clear that this controversy within a sport of such appreciation was not decisive in that sad episode of Biles leaving the Olympic Games competition with her eyes lost and visibly distressed. But it’s time for gymnastics to start celebrating this motor and biomechanics genius. Sometimes, it seems that the rules are more concerned with limiting her than strengthening her. It happened with the difficulty value assigned to her unprecedented exit from beam, but it happens and, much more so, with the punishments for her execution. Is there only one beautiful way to do gymnastics? What do the rules refer to when it comes to original and personal style?

In 2013, when her dominance began, Biles earned respect in her sports environment, although it was clear that the gymnastics that moved and thrilled fans was that of the Russian Aliya Mustafina, a unique competitor in soft but combative gymnastics.

Biles’ second Olympic cycle was quite different. On the long road to Tokyo 2020, which was finally Tokyo 2021, there was a position beyond the artistic gymnastics community: the figure of Biles began to become popular because of her hegemony, because of her routines of unprecedented difficulty and because, without Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps, she was the main face of the Olympic poster in the Japanese capital.

Looking ahead to her third Olympic cycle, which in itself is an enormous achievement considering how difficult it is to remain competitive in the race against time, there is no certainty as to what Simone Biles intends for Paris 2024. The truth is that she earned prestige for her courage to put on the agenda an issue that is increasingly present on the agenda of young people: that of mental health. Her return was a great celebration for gymnastics in the United States. In October, perhaps, we will have a chance to see her again at a World Cup. And hopefully we are ready to understand her dimension and, once and for all, enjoy watching her do gymnastics.

On the side of this trend that we eagerly turn into news. -you can’t even be sure that Simone will actually be in Paris-, it doesn’t hurt to remember the mistreatment that the athlete suffered during her tortuous Japanese experience.

Although many media outlets around the world began to talk about burnout as if it were another creation of the North American athlete, a sector of the press in her own country abused her to the point of accusing her of having abandoned her teammates.

Perhaps this, that of her splendid return, is a good opportunity to remember that no one suffers more from failure or enjoys the event more than the athlete itself. Whoever it may be.