Sensing her teammates were shaken by her stunning withdrawal from Tuesday’s Olympic team competition, the world’s greatest gymnast tried in vain to deliver a pep talk.
Simone Biles hugged Sunisa Lee, Grace McCallum and Jordan Chiles and urged them not to worry about her. Then she gently reminded them, “You guys have trained your whole entire life for this.”
“We were very stressed,” Lee later recalled. “We put a lot of pressure on ourselves.”
Added Chiles: “It was definitely something unexpected.”
It was jarring to watch the reigning Olympic champion remove herself from a competition that was supposed to be her coronation, but this isn’t the first time anxiety and self doubt have made a seemingly indomitable athlete vulnerable.