'Simone Biles Rising' on Netflix: The queen of gymnastics on her way to the 2024 Olympics in Paris
"I felt like I was in jail with my own brain and body," Biles says about her experience at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics
The queen of gymnastics, the Greatest of All Time (the GOAT), Simone Biles Rising on Netflix follows the athlete on her road to the 2024 Olympics in Paris. After withdrawing from events at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Biles gives us an honest look at the pressure of being such an elite athlete, both physically and mentally.
In the first two parts of the docuseries (the following two episodes will be released later this year), Biles looks back at how she was feeling in Tokyo and how she started to get back into training for another Olympic run. We also get a glimpse into her marriage to Jonathan Owens, and her relationship with her parents.
All being told with thrilling, mind-blowing and nerve-wracking footage of Biles being an extraordinary gymnast, it's a beautiful look at the life of an extraordinary woman, and the true nastiness of the public scrutiny she's faced.
"I’ve always had really good intuition about things," Biles says at the beginning of the series, adding that she felt something was off during the Tokyo Olympics.
When someone is so dominant in their sport, it's particularly heartbreaking to see those cracks, which is called having "the twisties" in gymnastics, where a gymnast starts to feel lost in their routine, losing their mind-body connection.
"To me it felt silent," Biles says in Simone Biles Rising, describing what it felt like competing in Tokyo.
"I felt like I was in jail with my own brain and body. ... I just feel so ashamed."
Competing with the twisties: 'You could die'
While many athletes have been conditioned to think that competing through pain, injury and any sort of impact on their performance is admirable, it can't be understated how dangerous it would have been for Biles to continue to compete while experiencing twisties.
"You could die," American gymnast Betty Okino, 1992 olympics bronze medalist, stresses in the docuseries.
"It’s the reality of flipping up in the air, upside down, and having to land on your feet. Your head could hit first."
"Everywhere I went I felt like they could see loser, ... quitter across my head," Biles shares about what it was like returning home from Tokyo.
Biles also show us her "forbidden Olympics closet," an area filled with leotards, clothing and other memorable items from Tokyo. Sharing that she used to sit there and cry. It's a literal representation of Biles closing the door on her experience in Tokyo, and wanting to keep it closed.
With Biles reading out comments and headlines criticizing her withdrawal from the 2020 Olympics, Simone Biles Rising should make the public take a hard look at exactly how insensitive and cruel it was to call out the gymnast for being a "quitter" and not being a team player when really, it's about being safe, physically and mentally.
A significant portion of Simone Biles Rising addresses a history of a lack of concern for the mental and physical wellbeing of athletes, particularly professional gymnasts who oftentimes are still just teenagers when they compete on the world stage.
"The sport is changing and we’re putting mental and physical health more at the forefront," Biles says. "I wouldn’t even say first, but more at the forefront."
Biles also opens up about "post-Olympic depression," where the competition is over, but it wasn't out of her mind.
As she slowly started to make her way back to the gym after Tokyo, Biles credits her teammates, like Joscelyn Roberson, for keeping her motivated to keep going, showing up day after day to train.
'Nobody every told us what, like, sexual abuse was'
Biles talks about having a "trauma response" in the series, and the gymnast has experienced significant trauma that she's tried to "push down" throughout her life.
Particularly notable is her experience with Larry Nassar, who is now serving a decades-long prison sentence for sexually assaulting athletes while employed by Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics. Biles famously was among the athletes who shared her story about being sexually abused by Nassar before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2021.
"I thought, like, I was so naive all of those years. Thinking it's normal," Biles says in the the Netflix docuseries, recalling the moment the information about Nassar started becoming public.
"Nobody every told us what, like, sexual abuse was. ... I realized it wasn't my fault, it was the culture of gymnastics and the people that covered it up."
'Simone is a once in a lifetime athlete'
Simone Biles Rising shows Biles' impressive result at the 2023 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, in Antwerp, Belgium. She won four gold medals, five medals overall, and is now he most decorated gymnast in history, with 37 medals at the world championships and Olympics, 27 of which are gold medals.
"Simone is a once in a lifetime athlete. Period," Okino says about Biles in Simone Biles Rising.
Olympics sports commentator Olly Hogben says in the docuseries that Biles is so impressive he's "running out of words" to use when she competes.
Her teammate Roberson says Biles is so dominant, it's like a team never losing a Super Bowl, but goes on to say that it's helpful to younger gymnasts to see that even Biles gets nervous.
Biles also stands with Okino, Dominique Dawes and Gabby Douglas, as Black gymnasts in a sport where the expected visual standard has been white women with blonde, straight hair.
As we head into the 2024 Paris Olympics, Simone Biles Rising isn't just a celebration of a public figure, it's an intimate and unsettling evaluation of the system that trains young athletes to be world champions.
