When we approach the subject of Tokyo, it begins that way. While Biles is generally honest about her feelings, she is skilled at presenting them in a rehearsed package. It is easy to see why little girls scream when she walks into the room. In conversation, she is reflective and warm and has a bighearted laugh. She has just begun rehearsals for Athleta’s Gold Over America, a nationwide gymnastics tour that she stars in in a few days, she will present at the VMAs and walk the Met Gala red carpet. Life is no less busy, but the stakes are much lower. Today, she seems more open to going with the flow. In the months when she’s competing or preparing to compete, she’s focused, regimented. It’s 10 a.m., but why not? The ease of postseason Simone Biles is an art. She’s wearing a crisp white T-shirt that looks like it was pulled straight off a Uniqlo shelf. Today, the 24-year-old gymnast is radiant and relaxed, her face lightly dressed with makeup. “My perspective has never changed so quickly from wanting to be on a podium to wanting to be able to go home, by myself, without any crutches,” Biles tells me over brunch at a hotel facing the south side of Central Park in early September. She immediately withdrew from the finals. It wasn’t just unexpected - it was terrifying. Then, on the fifth day of competition, she pushed off the vault and discovered she couldn’t see herself in her head, couldn’t see the map of the floor in order to land. Still, going into the Tokyo Olympics in the summer of 2021, after a successful competitive year, she expected things to go as they always did. In 2018, Biles revealed she had been sexually abused by former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar the organization she was winning medals for had covered up his crimes. The past few years had been the most trying stretch of her personal and professional life. This time, though, the break wasn’t a bone it was something in her spirit, an injury that could not be explained by CAT scan or X-ray. She’s what superheroes are made of, except she’s made of bones and muscles that strain and break. She has beaten the records of her idols - Nastia Liukin, Shawn Johnson, Alicia Sacramone - and they think she’s the undeniable greatest too. You think, Did that just happen? She flies higher and is more nimble than her competition, with more room for failure because what she attempts is that much more difficult. Watching her is like trying to catch light. This has been the mark of her genius since childhood, the thing that made her different. Catlike in her reflexes, she locates herself in space and lands on her feet every time. She can clear her mind and think of absolutely nothing. Simone Biles has a keen air sense, the ability to let muscle memory pilot against the brain’s logical judgment.
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