PARIS — Simone Biles was already supporting the weight of the world on her shoulders. Now a balky left calf is, too.
Biles felt a twinge in the calf during the warmup for the floor exercise at Sunday’s Olympic team preliminaries, the second of four apparatus rotations. She disappeared briefly from the competition area with the U.S. team doctor, then returned with the ankle and lower leg tightly taped … and looked like her dominant self in the floor, vault and uneven bars.
“Just a little pain in her calf,” said Cecile Landi, who coaches Biles with husband Laurent.
How much of a pain?
“I don’t know,” Landi said. “I’m not a doctor.”
A crush of reporters at L’Arena Bercy asked again a couple minutes later, after Biles walked past with a noticeable limp. Landi replied: “I will not be answering any more questions about her calf.”
We can’t ask the team doctors because they weren’t made available to the media. Nor was Biles or any of her fellow gymnasts after they posted the day’s best team score with 172.296 points, which was 5.435 points ahead of Italy in second place.
Which is a lot. Second, third and fourth place are separated by .412 points.
The team final for the top eight nations is Tuesday, and suddenly what was considered a walk in Versailles for the U.S. women without defending champion Russia here just got a splash of intrigue.
Is Simone OK?
She wasn’t three years ago in Tokyo, when she attempted a warmup vault in the first rotation of the team final, disappeared from the competition area with the team doctor and returned wearing a sweatsuit. She was done for the day, and the shell-shocked U.S. team crumbled to silver behind the Russians.
Biles skipped the individual all-around final as well, saying she was suffering from a case of the “twisties,” a malady where gymnasts lose all sense of spatial awareness, and didn’t feel safe competing. She also admitted to mental health issues, telling the world “it’s OK not to be OK.” She has seen a therapist regularly since.
Now, a bum calf.
Landi said it began bothering her a few weeks ago but indicated that she rested it and thought it was good to go. From the tape job, it looks to be in the lower leg, which likely means the soleus – the muscle that sits below and behind the gastroc that is closer to the knee.
“What she was able to do looking like she had some soreness or something in her lower leg is remarkable,” said Chellsie Memmel, a former U.S. Olympic gymnast who now serves as the program’s technical lead. “I feel really happy for her. She got through this day.”
Even with removing a jump from her floor exercise, taking a big step back on the dismount of her signature Yurchenko double pike vault and not attempting a new signature move in the uneven bars, Biles still had the best individual score with 59.566, giving her one of two U.S. spots in the individual all-around competition Thursday.
The other went to Tokyo gold medalist Suni Lee, who edged Jordan Chiles by .067 points under gymnastics’ controversial two-per-country rule for individual events. Another contender for the second U.S. spot was Jade Carey, but she fell during her floor exercise and scored a 10.633.
“I just have not been feeling well the past few days and haven’t been able to eat or anything,” Carey told Olympics.com. “I had, like, no energy today and didn’t really have a sense of what was going on in my head. So, I just kind of wanted people to know that so, they know that there’s actually something wrong.”
No such comments from Biles, who sent mixed signals throughout the competition about her state of health.
She looked downright melancholy after exiting the mat following her floor exercise, sitting by herself on the podium steps instead of immediately joining her teammates. A few moments later, after a warmup vault, she crawled on the mat, then hopped on her right leg before mockingly saying in range of NBC cameras: “I’m going to need a wheelchair.”
After a solid bars routine, she was beaming again and waved to an A-list crowd that included Tom Cruise, John Legend, Snoop Dogg, Nick Jonas, Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande and Jessica Chastain.
Then she limped through the media interview area without stopping to take questions.
Memmel, sitting in the stands, was asked what went through her mind when she saw Biles crawl on the vault podium.
“That’s not appropriate for me to say,” Memmel said.
Maybe it’s something. Maybe there are ongoing discussions about holding Biles out of the team final, which the U.S. should be able to win without her, to give her four days’ rest before the individual all-around.
Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe she’ll dazzle Tuesday.
“First and foremost,” Memmel said, “I just want to make sure she’s physically OK and we’re just going to go from there. … I’ll trust our medical team and trust Simone to make the best medical decisions for her.”
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