Simone Biles surprised everyone when she withdrew from the women’s team gymnastics final at the Tokyo Olympics on Tuesday. USA Gymnastics announced that Bills pulled out of the competition due to a “medical issue,” but after Team USA won the silver medal in the final, Biles talked to reporters about why she withdrew from the event.
“Whenever you get in a high-stress situation, you kind of freak out,” she said, per CNN. “I have to focus on my mental health and not jeopardize my health and well-being. It just sucks when you’re fighting with your own head.” The Russia Olympic Committee came away with the gold medal while Great Britain earned the Bronze. Before the competition, the other Team USA members tried to get Biles to continue competing.
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“I was like: I think the girls need to do the rest of the competition without me. They were like ‘I promise you’ll be fine, we watched you warm up’. But I said ‘No, I know I am going to be fine but I can’t risk a medal for the team and I need to call it,” Biles explained. “You usually don’t hear me say things like that because I usually persevere and push through things, but not to cost the team a medal. So they were like: ‘OK, if Simone says this, we need to take it pretty serious.’ I had the correct people around me to do that.”
Biles appeared on the TODAY show and told Hoda Kotb how she was feeling. “Physically, I feel good, I’m in shape,” she told Hoda Kotb exclusively on TODAY. “Emotionally, that kind of varies on the time and moment. Coming here to the Olympics and being the head star isn’t an easy feat, so we’re just trying to take it one day at a time and we’ll see.”
Biles gets a silver medal and now has six medals in her Olympic career. She still has the individual events to compete in but is uncertain if she will be ready for the events. “I’m OK, just super frustrated of how the night played out, but super proud of these girls that stepped up and did what they needed to do and now we’re Olympic silver medalists, so it’s something that we’ll cherish forever,” Biles said. “We hope America still loves us.”
