Aug 28, 2024; Indianapolis, Indiana, USA; American gymnast and Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles smiles during a game between the Indiana Fever and the Connecticut Sun at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. Mandatory Credit: Grace Smith-INDIANAPOLIS STAR-USA TODAY Sports
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No matter how you’re feeling about the election results this week, the fact is, it just got a lot harder to identify as female this week. Particularly if you need healthcare as someone identifying as female.
What does that have to do with gymnastics? Well, we’re talking about a sport where hundreds of young women over the last decade have come forward about being abused by a doctor in the guise of medical care. For them, it’s personal.
The documentary “Simone Biles Rising,” the last two episodes of which I reviewed here last week, contains a telling moment about the changes in gymnastics since Biles’ first Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. When Biles injures her calf in Olympic qualifications, we see her coach, Cecile Landi, speaking to the team’s trainer. The trainer wonders if Biles will be honest about the extent of what she is feeling. Landi says (I’m paraphrasing) that four years ago, Biles would not have said anything, but at this time, she will be honest.
We got this intimate, revealing look inside a top athlete’s life in that documentary, and we saw one of her biggest vulnerabilities on a world stage: the need to seek immediate medical care from an organization that betrayed her not so long ago. In just a few lines, we know what a long struggle it was for her to be able to make the decision to be treated in that moment.
It is not so hard to extrapolate from this how many of us are feeling suddenly exposed and vulnerable as well in the wake of Tuesday’s election, unsure where we might turn for medical care should we need it and knowing that our abilities to make decision about our own bodies are suddenly restricted.
So go ahead. Say sports are not political. But I know, and I think most of us at The IX know, that sports stories are human stories, and a lot of those human stories are political. Biles’ story shows us what happens when women’s voices are silenced and their choices are narrowed by the people tasked with caring for them.
The Olympic Channel interviewed Leanne Wong about her upcoming plans. Wong, an alternate for the Paris Olympic team, will represent the U.S. at the Swiss Cup and has begun her senior year at Florida.
