You know what's better than winning gold? Justice and accountability.

Trigger warning: Article mentions sexual assault and trauma.

The early morning sun peaked through the slits in my window blinds as I rolled over and instinctively reached for my phone. The screen illuminated and was flooded with news notifications – “Simone Biles Withdraws from Team Final”.

I remember being stunned in my sleepy stupor, thinking my eyes were failing me – how could the best gymnast in the world, “the GOAT” as Simone Biles is often referred, drop out of the Olympics? Biles was favored to win it big at the Tokyo Olympics; shock was felt around the world when she cited a medical issue and mental health concerns as the reasons for stepping away from the remaining team and individual events.

Her talent and strength are undeniable – Biles already has four gymnastics skills named after her, a feat that only happens when gymnasts perform novel skills at major international competitions. (1) She was even expected to add a fifth skill to her well-decorated legacy in Tokyo this summer, but Biles removed herself from the competition before its proposed debut. (1)

  Notably, one of her trademark skills on the balance beam, rightfully called the “Biles,” serves as an unsettling metaphor for the complicated relationship between Biles and gymnastics governing organizations – the “Biles” progresses women’s gymnastics forward, and how does the administration respond? (1) By downgrading the skill’s score value to discourage other gymnasts from trying it. (1) The proposed reasoning were safety concerns, which seems weird considering how the same organizations allowed a serial-molester access to its most prized athletes. (1) So was it really a precautionary measure or was it systemic racism masked in a veil of concern?

Although my principal motivation for this piece is to illuminate how sexual violence and abuse are intimately linked to a wide array of negative health effects, I can’t ignore the role that race and gender have played in Biles’ gymnastics career. One article eloquently explains, “she is a Black woman dominating an industry that has neglected and discriminated against athletes of her kind … she is held to higher standards and [has become] a role model for the next generation of Black gymnasts and Black women … that is an incredible burden.” (2) Thus, the racial dynamics at play are complex, and it is imperative to recognize the intersectionality of Biles’ experience in order to attempt to understand her journey.   

As my research into Biles’ gymnastics career and the media slurry surrounding the Tokyo Olympics continued, I quickly learned that Biles was all too familiar with being undermined and abandoned by organizations she was supposed to trust. In 2019 before the U.S. Gymnastics Championships, Biles told reporters, “I don’t mean to cry… It’s just hard coming here for an organization and having had them fail us so many times… We had one job [winning Olympic gold in Rio 2016] and we have done everything that they asked us for – even when we didn’t want to. And they couldn’t do one damn job! You had one job; you literally had one job, and you couldn’t protect us!” (3)

Biles was referring to the abuse of former team doctor, Larry Nassar, and the findings of an 18-month congressional investigation that concluded both the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC) and USA Gymnastics “knowingly concealed” Nassar’s abuse for years.ii Both organizations subjected Biles and more than 200 other victims to the abuse of Nassar, who is currently serving 100 to 175 years in prison for charges of child pornography, sexual assault of a minor, and tampering with evidence. (4) Some might assume that justice has been served because Nassar is behind bars; however, a new, chilling report proves otherwise and may give additional insight into Biles’ headspace going into the Olympics.

About a week before the start of the Tokyo Olympics, the Justice Department’s inspector general released a report detailing how the FBI delayed the investigation of Nassar for more than a year, allowing him to abuse and exploit even more young girls. (5) The report states that between July 2015 (when the USA Gymnastics first reported allegations relating to Nassar to the FBI’s Indianapolis field office) and August 2016 (when Michigan State University Police Department received a separate complaint) upwards of 70 young athletes were abused by Nassar, including one as young as 8 years old. (5) Further, the report states that FBI officials didn’t proceed with the investigation until after media outlets, like The Indianapolis Star, began detailing the abuse in September 2016. (5)

The disgrace of the FBI doesn’t stop there – the special agent in charge of the Nassar investigation in Indianapolis, W. Jay Abbott, lied to the inspector general’s office on numerous accounts and violated FBI policies. (5) Abbott even met up with Steve Penny, the former president and chief executive of USA Gymnastics, to discuss potential job opportunities at the USOPC. (5) Abbott later applied for a job and then lied about that as well to the inspector general. (5) Abbott was never prosecuted by the Justice Department for any of his countless infractions and his lawyer responded to the inspector general’s report by stating, “Mr. Abbott hopes the courageous victims of Nassar’s horrible crimes find peace.” (5) The audacity is truly uncanny.

When I think of Biles, I think of her countless hours in the gym, catapulting herself off a vault or flipping off the uneven bars, not her having to read reports detailing how governmental organizations repeatedly failed her. The intimate details of betrayal by the FBI don’t go unnoticed by Biles; she has expressed her dismay, stating, “I try just not to think about it, but it is hard once you see the FBI even was in on it and drank with Steve Penny and stuff … it’s like, ‘Did you guys really not like us that much that you couldn’t just do your job?’” (3)

As Biles entered the 2021 Olympics, she continued to use her large public following to draw attention to the severe mishandling of the mass abuse inflicted on her and many other gymnasts. In an interview leading up to the Tokyo Games, she cited that a primary motivator for her return was to “try to ensure some accountability.” (6) Biles stated, “If there weren’t a remaining survivor in the sport, they would’ve just brushed it to the side.” (6) It seems that just as easily as the USOPC, USA Gymnastics, and the FBI can evade responsibility, the American public can forget the years of abuse and trauma these athletes have been subjected to.

In fact, Biles’ fight for justice comes at a price, and a steep one. She faces re-traumatization each time she steps into the arena and onto the mat. “It’s like fighting all those demons coming in here,” she recounted after the team competition in Tokyo. (6) Another former gymnast and survivor, Rachel Denhollander, agrees, stating “[the Olympics] is a huge trigger… this time of year is awful because it brings back what it was like … it brings back how hard it was to speak up, to verbalize it all for the first time. This is when it all came out. And the body does keep score. It remembers those times of year and those anniversaries. I can’t even imagine trying to function.” (6)

Research confirms that sexual abuse negatively affects both mental and physical health and has severe long-term implications. Evidence details statistically significant associations between sexual abuse and lifetime diagnosis of anxiety disorder, depression, eating disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, sleep disorders, and suicide attempts. (7) In fact, Biles opened up about her “deep depression” following the publicity of Nassar’s abuse, stating, “At one point I slept so much because, for me, it was the closest thing to death without harming myself. It was an escape from all of my thoughts, from the world, from what I was dealing with. It was a really dark time.” (8)

In addition to debilitating psychiatric conditions, it has been shown that women with a history of sexual abuse and violence also had higher prevalence rates of asthma, irritable bowl syndrome, diabetes, frequent headaches, chronic pain, difficulty sleeping, and activity limitations. (9) Both the mental and physical health outcomes can last a survivor’s entire lifetime, often serving as a constant reminder of the trauma they experienced.

In addition to the direct physical injury that abuse causes, another potential mechanism for poor health outcomes is the harmful biologic response to the chronic stress caused by the abuse. (8) The term “allostatic load” describes this phenomenon, relating chronic stress to poor health. (10) It involves complex interactions between various physiological systems in the body and how they respond when the body’s stress response systems are repeatedly activated. (10) Several biomarkers have been linked to allostatic load, including cortisol, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), epinephrine, norepinephrine, and others, which underscore the profound biochemical changes that occur at the cellular level inside the body. (10)

It is quite possible that we saw an explicit example of how the biology of chronic stress affected Biles when she reported feeling “the twisties” during her last performance prior to her withdrawal. Gymnasts describe “the twisties” as a confusing state where they have lost the sense of where their body is in the air in relation to the ground while performing a skill. (11) Biles recounted, “I had no idea where I was in the air… I could have hurt myself.” (11) This disorientating and life-threatening experience is corroborated by research; one study explains that “too much stress can interfere with the brain’s ability to initiate learned motor sequences.” (11) Further, stress can induce the release of glucocorticoid hormones, like cortisol, which have receptors in both the motor cortex and cerebellum of the brain and the spinal cord. (11) This hormonal imbalance can disrupt the intricate signaling pathways between the brain and spinal cord, and thus be a trigger for “the twisties”. (11)

I do not intend to diagnose Biles in any way or make predictions about her health; however, the gravity of the expansive deleterious effects of sexual abuse needs to be addressed – not only for Biles, but for all survivors. I was frustrated that most of the publicity surrounding Biles and the Olympics neglected any mention of the years of abuse she was subjected to, nor highlighted it as a potential trigger for her withdrawal. The countless articles which simply state “mental health” as a catch-all explanation inherently diminish the severity of the trauma that Biles and other survivors endured.

Even though Biles courageously returned for the final event, her initial decision to step out of the Olympics was far from an easy one and seemed to involve a multitude of factors. Personally, I choose to see it as a necessary act of defiance and advocacy – the governing organizations have proved time and time again that they do not have her health and safety as their top priorities. So Biles did what she does best – showed she was a strong athlete and would do what was best for her. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Biles reminded us, “we are not just entertainment, we are humans.” (12)

She will always be the greatest of all time, this time though, for what she *didn’t* do in the gymnastics arena.

Samantha Goulding