Simone Biles GOAT or goat?

[msquared]

GOAT.

[rightleft22]

My response to Simone decision was good for her taking care of her self. What she does is dangerous and if your head isn't in the game best to step back.
My reaction was - she gave herself the yips and her training should have addressed that possibility.

A GOAT would learn not to let the expectations of other keep them from focusing on the task at hand and have confidence in their training. I say that knowing that I could never handle the pressure and so have and will never be a GOAT at anything.

I think that was why my reaction was one of disappointment. When I watch the Olympics the moments that move me are the one in which the athletes overcome that pressure, overcome their fears and do it anyway. Not so much about winning as it is allowing their bodies to do what it was trained to do despite the pressure and fears.
I suspect I project my need to believe its possible.  My reaction more about me then Simone


I worry that in a year or two as Simone looks back if she doesn't wonder...(I would) which could affect her mental health as well. I know I would be full of negative self talk.

[yossarian22c]

If she doesn't feel its best for her to compete then don't. However, I feel bad for whoever was the last person cut from the Olympic team. If she didn't have it in her to compete it would have been nice to let that alternate compete, get the chance of a lifetime. Tougher in a team event, where you took one of a limited number of spots. At the end of the day its sports/entertainment, if competing is going to be harmful for her in anyway she should back out.

[msquared]

From what I have read, she was in a good place at the trials, so would not have dropped out then. They also have alternates so she was replaced. In fact her replacement won the individual all around.

[rightleft22]

Been watching Olympic coverage from a number of countries
Interesting that in general and regardless of sport a common comment is how the athlete overcame some mental or physical issue. It seems we expect and want the GOAT to overcome.

I don't see the not overcoming the pressure of expectations and exiting competition for mental health reasons becoming the new exceptional GOAT moment...   Well the alt left progress movement might... 

I give even odds that Simone competes in a couple of individual events (not the vault) and gets that overcoming moment.
 

[rightleft22]

So Simone has brought Mental health to national attention, even though its always been a factor and talked about in Athletics for as long as I remember and part of most cometary as athletes are talking about and all the struggles they had to overcome. 

Watching the news interviews with the sport phycologists. They talked about the methods used to help athletes overcome anxiety, expectations, depression, life after...   while not addressing the fact that those methods didn't work for Simon who had access to them. I don't know... I feel this is a symptom of something larger...

It just seems there are so many contradictions,  everyone saying the 'right' things and at some level creating more anxiety for everyone to deal with.

[Grant]

I think the first thing to do is to acknowledge that the situation was a bad one.  Nobody wanted that to happen.  Not the US Olympic Gymnastics Team.  Not the people of the nation.  Not Simone Biles.  So it wasn't good. 

That said, athletes get mental hangups.  Even elite athletes.  Happens to baseball players all the time.  Something mental affects something physical and suddenly batters can't hit the ball and pitchers can't hit their target.  It can last for an entire season.  It can ruin a career.  These are elite athletes and it sometimes happens.  I don't recall it ever happening to an Olympic gymnast before, but the Olympics only happen for a few weeks every four years.  When it happens it happens and there isn't some simple solution like a great halftime speech. 

I respect that she took a really really hard choice that concerned her physical safety.  She could break her neck, not just strikeout or give up a homerun.  She did the right thing.  I understand that she was probably under more pressure than any Olympian since Michael Phelps.  She was being overhyped.  Blame the media and sports illustrated that wanted a hero. 

Is she a goat?  Defiantly not.  But is she the GOAT?  I dunno.  I think all that GOAT crap is part of what caused this to happen.  There is some Soviet gymnast with 9 gold medals, but that was back in the 50s and 60s.  Simone has the most of any American gymnast.  Certainly the most of any current or recently current gymnast.  Raisman and Ponor have 3 each. 

I dunno.  I think she missed her opportunity to be the GOAT.  But that's fine too.  I think another part of the problem was Olympians getting too wrapped up in their identity as Olympians.  Gold medals aren't going to get anybody into heaven.  I'd be happy if Simone Biles finds a purpose and excels at life outside of gymnastics.  She's a complete person who is just beginning her journey in life and has a ways to go.  But I won't doubt her courage and her ability to make the right choice.  I'm not going to celebrate having a mental problem in athletics and withdrawing, because it wasn't the ideal.  But it was still the right thing to do given the circumstances. 

[alai]

It's a horrible thing to sit in judgement of.  Naturally I've had cases where someone has has claimed "but ma mental health!", and I've felt they were shamelessly disrespectful for people with real struggles to try to get something they wanted.  (This is why I must an unvaccinated indoor pint, take my dog on a plane, never be subject to any criticism no matter how poor my own behaviour is, etc.)  Biles doesn't strike me that way, but even for others I'm leerier of, well, who's to judge?  One will never know, short of being in the other person's head, or the other person's therapist's chair.  Maybe not even then.

They also have alternates so she was replaced. In fact her replacement won the individual all around.

Not exactly how it worked in either event, as I understand it.  The team format is play four, carry three scores.  No replacements allowed, so that meant that the US had no 'discard' available, while the other teams did.  Biles's score in the vault did stlll count, so not a gimme whether a hypothetical fifth gymnast would have given the US a better outcome.  On the face of it it looks like they'd have done at least as well, as the two other US gymnasts not in the team event were higher placed in the individual all-around, so I assume the logic of the team selection was to use the discards to their benefit with competitors who're strong on some apparatuses and weaker on others.  It would of course have given that other gymnast a medal (in all likelihood, of some kind), rather then Biles.

The individual finals are obviously, well, individual, though there is a two-per-country limit from the qualifying phase.  (It is NationalismBall, after all!)  Sunisa Lee was the second-highest-placed US gymnast, so would have been grand regardless.  Jade Carey was the third-placed American, and was allowed to compete after Biles's withdrawal, so loosely speaking you could say she was the "alternate".