(Chicago) World gymnastics superstar Simone Biles, who hasn’t competed since the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, returns to the US Classic in Chicago on Saturday, a possible first stop on the road to the Games Paris Olympics.
A four-time Olympic gold medalist and 19-time world championship gold medalist, the American had withdrawn from most events in Japan for mental health and safety reasons.
In Tokyo, she had successively given up team competition, all-around, vault, uneven bars and floor, leaving the Olympic scene far from her initial ambitions, despite a bronze medal on the beam.
Planetary star whose aura goes far beyond gymnastics, she then confided that she felt like she had “the weight of the world on her shoulders”.
Simone Biles, 26, explained her problems by an attack of “twisties”, dangerous loss of bearings in space putting athletes at risk of injury when they land.
“It’s the craziest feeling ever,” Biles described in 2021.
“What’s even scarier is that with this loss of bearings, I have no idea how I’m going to land, or even what I’m going to land on,” she added.
Biles’ decision to retire from competition had helped bring to the fore the subject of the mental health of top athletes.
After confirming her return last month, she said she is still in therapy to help her “manage the mental aspect” of her daily life.
“I do a lot of therapy, I go once a week for almost two hours,” she said on her Instagram account.
“I’ve had so many traumas, that being able to work through them and work on healing them is a blessing,” Biles added.
Simone Biles had revealed to be one of the victims of the ex-doctor of the American women’s team Larry Nassar, sentenced to life imprisonment for sexual assaults committed during two decades on more than 250 gymnasts, most of them minors.
In a Q&A with her Instagram fans over the weekend, Biles also claimed that her fear of “twisties” was now behind her, admitting to being nervous returning to the gym.
“When the ‘twisties’ would show up, I’d go straight to the gym and try to work on them. I took over a year off, so I was petrified to start again,” she said.
” But I’m fine. I started doing twists again. No worries, everything is fine,” reassured the sportswoman.
Simone Biles’ schedule, after that first weekend of competition in Chicago, remains uncertain, with her participation in the Paris Olympics next year still up in the air.
“For Paris, for now, I would say that I will be there no matter what,” the American said in an interview in September 2022, without knowing “if it will be as an athlete or as a than a spectator”
The US Classic is one of the most prestigious events on the American calendar, dress rehearsal before the United States Championships, scheduled this year at the end of August in San Jose.
It was already during this competition that Biles made his return in 2018, after a two-year break following the Rio Games in 2016.
Reigning Olympic all-around champion Sunisa Lee, who has battled a kidney condition this year, will also return to competition this weekend.
