This is simultaneously about Simone Biles and not about Simone Biles. I'm not an elite level athlete with big money endorsements and people hanging their dreams on me. I don't know that life or that life's pressure. I do better than most in my chosen athletic endeavors but I'm not at that level and so I I will refrain from bashing on her too much. Besides, Biles, and Osaka are really a symptom of a larger problem with America. It is no longer a country of winners.
One of my favorite movies is Apollo 13 featuring Tom Hanks. If I'm flipping channels and I see that movie on, I stop and let it play out. Clearly I know what's going to happen but that's not the point. For me Apollo 13 is a throw back to an America that wasn't a whiny ass bitch complaining about shit. It shows a time when men were men and under extreme pressure, GOT SHIT DONE.
The ability to perform under pressure is not something all of us have. It is a rare gift that if you have it, you are likely to go on to do great things. If you don't have it, you are lucky to have such a person on your team.
Apollo 13 showed men who undertook their jobs with the utmost seriousness. Lives were on the line. Fuck sleep. We're going to get the sequence to get the computer up or die trying. We will do it again and again until we get it.
Onboard the crippled ship. We are going to keep our wits about us and remain calm even though our oxygen is running out. Even though if we don't angle this ship right, without the aide of the computer we will either bounce off the atmosphere or be on a completely wrong angle that causes us to burn to a crisp. Assuming we don't simply explode.
That's pressure.
Another thing, for me, is that when I mentally complain that I have to run these 10 miles and it's hot or cold or whatever. I reflect on my ancestors and tell myself that a 10 mile run is not hard. Weeks in the hold of a slave ship is hard. Working from can't see to can't see in the southern heat is hard.
I think of Denmark Vessey (Telemaque) and I think of the strong constitution it took to plan a slave rebellion knowing full well that to be caught was to face certain and probable cruel death. And yet he and his compatriots did it anyway.
I think of the run away slaves I read about in the "Carolina room" when I was researching on Denmark Vesey and seeing all the reports of runaway slaves who braved the marshes to be free. Again, knowing full well that to be caught would result in a minimum "serious" punishment and likely death.
And still they went.
Is Olympic gymnastics that important? No. But still, these are the people who came before you. They didn't quit. All we asked you to do, that you volunteered to do, was represent the country to the best of your ability for a few days. That was apparently asking too much.
Apparently she didn't want to injure herself.
Someone should have told her about the crash during the bike race. When you're the champ and competing at the top level of the sport, injury and the risk of it comes with the territory.
When I was growing up ABC, the tv station, had a sports program which featured the phrase:
The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.
And it featured a montage of athletes enduring epic fails that surely resulted in [great] bodily injury.
We used to understand that the game came with risks.
Now we hide in our houses. Put on face masks and allow people to inject untested shit into our bodies so we can "feel safe".
America is now a nation of quitters with low expectations.
Black people aren't in the selective high schools because they don't do well on the entrance exams? Instead of telling them to buckle down and study, we tell them that the problem is the tests and move to scrap the tests.
Black students not behaving in school and hence getting suspended? Instead of insisting on high standards of behaviors, no, we'll just allow them to be disruptive, Don't wan't them to feel inferior.
Black males committing crimes at alarming rates that are [many] multiples of other groups? Don't insist on better behavior and accountability. Decriminalize this that and the other.
I could go on but for those who have eyes to see, they know what I speak on.
So no. Biles' actions is not really an individual thing. It is a product of a larger problem that is a cancer eating at America. Personally, I think it's terminal. Hopefully I'm wrong.
