2020, uh, 21, uh, who knows Tokyo Olympics thread

I believe it, and I'm fine with her right to make whatever decision she thinks is best for her. But that's always the case, with anybody, isn't it?

I'm just bringing up what this looks/seems like, particularly given the timing, and given that it's Biles, who probably hasn't had a score that low in about eight years. And if it's really a mental-health issue, that seems as if it must be/have been ongoing, and could've and should've been decided and worked out before she was in the middle of the Olympics.

To me, the twisties is not a mental-health issue, exactly. It's a sport-centric, pretty physical, or at least physiological, issue, actually, and should be presented as such.

 

If you chop it down to this paragraph alone I agree with you.

 

I hope Forde’s kid wins a gold. Just for the story he will write.

 

We have millions of words being spewed around the world about a situation that only really needs a: “Oh, that sucks she couldn’t compete. She’s really fun to watch. Hope she’s okay.”

Anything beyond that, whether you’re trying to make her a villain or a hero is a person who isn’t in her head. And even she probably doesn’t know what’s going on in her head. Just like most of us don’t.

 

Oh, I think there's room for some "where'd we fail her and this process" discussion to be had within Team USA, USA gym, even NBC. Absolutely. It's less than ideal to have the biggest star of the Olympics leave after a single vault - for America, and for the Olympics.

The trials were a tell. She didn't look like herself, and the general vibe was "It's fine, everything's fine," in part because it had become almost verboten to question or criticize her performances. She was falling off stuff and landing poorly and the general idea was "nobody can do what she's doing, we don't understand what we're seeing, the shitty landings are a byproduct of whatever amazing thing's happening in the air that we couldn't begin to decipher, also, goat slides" and everybody can see now where that got her and the team. (And NBC.) The worst thing you can do to an athlete is sit there and lie to them about how they're performing, and it's not clear whether she had any accountability in that area.

 

I advocated for tearing USA gymnastics down to the studs before the first plane ever took off for Tokyo. I literally would not keep anyone above the rank of janitor who was there for the Nassar years.

 

"Where'd we fail her?" probably starts with the chief medical coordinator for USA Gymnastics molesting hundreds of gymnasts.

 

Biles has had anxiety and confidence issues going back to 2013 at least. She's done very well working her issues. I'm not about to reproach her.

There's no way that she wasn't aware that she'd been off for a while, and anxiety over it probably fed into what's happening now.

 

Speaking of that asshole …

Federal prison officials have allowed Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics doctor accused of sexually abusing hundreds of girls and women, to avoid paying financial penalties that are part of his sentence — even as he spent more than $10,000 from his Bureau of Prisons account while behind bars, according to a new court filing.

The spending details are contained in a prosecutor’s motion Wednesday that seeks to force the Bureau of Prisons to turn over Nassar’s current prison account balance to help cover a court-ordered payment of $5,300 to the federal Crime Victims Fund.

Bureau of Prisons officials have only required Nassar to pay about $100 a year, according to court papers, or about $300 since he entered the federal prison system in late 2017 after pleading guilty to receiving and possessing child pornography.​

Prison officials allowed convicted sex abuser Larry Nassar to pay little to victims while spending thousands on himself — The Washington Post

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And most of the naysayers, I'm guessing, don't give a flying fuck about gymnastics until an Olympic year. Because Amurica!

 

That’s some deep stuff there.