Tuesday, August 3, 2021

Simone Biles and the new Gold standard for bronze medals

Jade Carey's gold medal was also mentioned in the news
If you pay attention to the news, I'm sure you heard that American Olympic gymnast Simone Biles stepped away from competition a week or so ago.  Initially citing mental health concerns and pressures, she then revealed she had what amounts to a spot of vertigo for gymnasts.  It happens because of the twisting and turning in the air that is common for the sport..  I remember vaguely hearing about such things when my third son was in gymnastics before switching to football.

Anyhoo, I was going to post on the problem with elevating having to step aside and quit as the true hero, versus merely being sympathetic and supportive for the same.  That it's the one who overcomes, even if they don't win, that is the hero.  The other is simply a brother or sister who needs our support and understanding. 

Well, Ms. Biles came back either despite or perhaps because she overcame it or something, and competed on the one remaining competition she was willing to do and won the bronze medal.  I know this because this was leading headline news on the morning news shows.  She is the winner, the GOAT (that means greatest of all time - having tied for the most medals for an American female gymnast).  She overcame, she achieved, she won. Oh, and some other girls won gold medals and things.

At the end of the day, this has just been the press keeping the narrative alive.  Going into the 2021 Olympics, the dominant narrative - beyond which American athletes or teams would take the opportunity of medaling to piss on the American flag - was that Simone Biles would be expected to walk on water and feed the multitudes upon arriving in Tokyo.  I was vaguely aware that some other people calling themselves athletes were expected to be in Tokyo during this time - aside from the US Women's Soccer team of course - but it was Simone who was going to stroll in and bring home the bucket of gold.

Well, that didn't happen.  I can't say what's in Ms. Bile's mind.  Granted, she is good.  Very, very good.  I know she was warming up to the attention going into the Olympics.  I also know she bombed in her preliminary qualifying events.  I mean, bombed.  If you told me she was a first year Olympian with no experience on the world stage, I would have believed you.  How much was simply losing that all important focus that separates the champs from the 'who?' athletes, I don't know.  

I just know the narrative didn't play out the way the American press - and, quite frankly, the American gymnastics industry - had hoped.   She was hopefully going to be the next Michael Phelps, or Usain Bolt, or anything they can cash in with and boost ratings.   

In this case, they found a clever way to cash in and boost ratings anyway, even with someone who underperformed.  It being 2021, her stepping aside and citing - initually - mental health issues pushed her to near martyrdom levels.  Oh sure, some others got some gold, and those who excelled got their time in the sun - but always under the shadow of Simone, where almost every lead in story this year began with Simone, Simone, Simone.

I sometimes think we now fear heroics
In fact so celebrated did Simone become for leaving her place in the competition, that some began to talk about previous cases of Olympic heroics as if they may have been wrong all along.  When some complained about the praise and adoration Ms. Biles was receiving for stepping aside, previous stories were brought up, such as Kerri Strug's legendary vault in the 1996 Olympics, despite the agonizing pain of a hurt ankle.  That it ended up being inconsequential to the US victory was beside the point.  It still remained an image and story that inspired a generation.  Nonetheless, in 2021 post-Biles discourse, I saw more than one individual state that perhaps Kerri Strug shouldn't have done it at all.  Maybe she should have quit as well, and then she really would have been a hero.

I think sometimes this is how the press operates.  I have no idea what was in Simone Biles' head.  Was she remembering previous media darlings who crashed and burned and became forgotten also-rans?  Was she thinking of competitors like Debi Thomas from the  '88 Olympics?  Did her less than stellar performance send shivers that she might end up the same way, and she found a way out in our day when 'mental health issues' is everyone's go to Get Out of Jail Free card?  No clue. 

Does this mean we should condemn those who give in, or have to quit, or succumb to the pressures of the world?  Of course not.  Everyone has their breaking point, no matter how it gets there.   I'm all for saying we shouldn't spit on her or anyone who needs help.  If you break under pressure or have other issues, we're here to help, support and lift up.  But that's different from saying you're the real champ for having to bow out. Though such an attitude is expected in our day and age, there's something there that grates on me.  

I dunno.  I just know the press turned on a dime and did something it's been able to do more and more in recent decades, and about stories beyond just the Olympics.  It built up Simone Biles as the next great contributor to the human story, only to watch her underperform.  Then it took her explanation as gospel truth, and spun everything we've ever come to expect about heroism, champions, and the bravery of overcoming and turned it upside down.  So much so, that people began questioning past heroism and wondering, however subtly, if it should be those who can't who become the real heroes, and those who overcome who open themselves up to scrutiny. 

12 comments:

  1. I can imagine an NFL star who was fine physically, but did not play in the Super Bowl because of a mental issue, and said he might hurt himself and harm team performance. He would probably be roasted alive! I feel a man would not get sympathy or praise.
    Just saying...

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    1. Was demonstrated in the movie Remember the Titans when during a dramatic game one of the players walked away. The movie is clearly not praising him.

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    2. It would depend of course. As I said, whatever her reasoning, the press is simply keeping the narrative (and the investment) alive by changing the definitions as to just what a hero or a winner happen to be.

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  2. The best reaction to Simone Biles is to say "who the heck is that?" which is what I could honestly do before so many conservative outlets started picking up on the story. Conservative outrage only feeds into the narrative, i.e. "she is a brave woman battling her personal demons, but the evil misogynistic conservatives are trying to keep her down!" They would still be able to convince people that she is a hero, since many people believe whatever the news says, but the story would have no momentum without our reactions. If the story is just that she won a bronze they can keep talking about that for a couple of days, but after that even the most devoted news zombie will get board and move onto something else.

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    1. Yeah, I only know who she is because my sister is obsessed with gymnastics. I have ne idea whether or not her mental health claims are legit. All I know is I have more important stuff to worry about. It's like the Kaepernick story. Sure, I think it's dumb that he dissed the National Anthem, but if people hadn't complained so much, would he have amassed all the fame and money he did?

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    2. I've paid attention to the Olympics for most of my life. Plus, in our neck of the woods, she's a hometown girl, so obviously I've seen much more about her. But it's the press's national obsession about maintaining the narrative against the evidence that I noticed. And the subsequent denigrating of just what a hero happens to be.

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  3. I love how heroism has evolved. It used to be that a hero was an ordinary person doing the extraordinary at the risk of life and limb. Then the left determined everyone was a hero. You know...teachers in school are hero's even if they were trained and are paid to do that job. People who work with the disadvantage are hero's, again even though they are trained and are paid to do this. Heck, even the cableman is a hero for climbing that pole to connect people to CNN. Everyone became a hero so no one was a hero anymore. Now the heroism is in losing at what one is trained to do. It is withdrawing from the competition that makes one a hero today not rising to the occasion and doing your best with what you've got in order to win. With any luck the next step in the evolution of heroism will again be real heros not the phonies.

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    1. Yes!! I remember the old definition quite well growing up and I'm not even that old! (Late Gen Xer) Even in Catholic circles I just saw on another mom have to delete her post on Instagram of the saint t-shirt she made of half Franciscan habit - half Auschwitz uniform for Maximillian Kolbe. (This was meant for dress up/saint days.) But she ended up getting bullied by other Catholic moms that it was "anti-Semitic" among other things and took it down! One Catholic influencer got in on the whining but even SHE has a pic of Kolbe in prison garb on her website so... I don't know. And every year more and more Catholics refuse to hold up St. Maria Goretti as a martyr for purity. We don't even love our own heroes in the Church apparently. Is it because we don't believe in heroics anymore either? Just thinking out loud.

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    2. Yes, I would call it devolving. It's as if we'd rather define heroism down that try to reach up and be heroes. Sad thing is, there are plenty of heroes out there. It's just that our pop culture institutions seem to insist that we spend less time on those, and more time redefining hero so everyone can be a hero, just like everyone can be a winner, be awesome, be right.

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  4. No. Hector and Agamemnon were heroes. Jason and Perseus and Theseus were heroes. Sgt. York and Audie Murphy and Pappy Boyington were heroes. Even Goliath was arguably a hero; at the very least, he was a champion.

    Being a hero is more about being the kind of person who wins a Medal of Honor or Victoria Cross or whatever the local equivalent is than it is about being a nice person. It doesn't matter whether or not Lyudmila Pavlichenko was as sweet as your Sunday-school teacher, with 309 confirmed kills as a sniper, she was definitely a hero.

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  5. I wonder, are they doing this to distract from the fact that a white woman won the gold medal?

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    1. That's hard to say. That Simone was black was emphasized of course, but that it was non-black athletes who saved the day could be an issue. I dunno. I think it's just a case of the media not letting what actually happened in the world intrude upon the media narrative.

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