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Simone Biles Is Done Being Judged

Related Topics: Simone Biles

Three years after she dropped out of the Tokyo Games with a mental block, she is back at the Olympics with a defiant attitude — and a sense of where she is in the air.

Simone Biles performing on the balance beam in Tokyo in 2021.Credit...Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

By Juliet Macur

  • July 28, 2024

With a toe-tapping Beyoncé song blasting in the arena, Simone Biles leaped up to the balance beam and wobbled, leaning over and circling her arms like windmills as if she were trying not to fall off a cliff.