The best part of Simone Biles’s 2023 is 2024.
When this year began, it seemed like we might never see the greatest gymnast of all time perform again. Biles had long been planning to end her career at the Tokyo Olympics, which the pandemic pushed to 2021. But when she developed a mental block called the twisties, which robbed her of her ability to locate herself in space and left her at risk of catastrophic injury, she had to pull out of all but one competition there. (She is Simone Biles, so even after fighting through the worst week of her career and stripping down her routine, she earned bronze on the balance beam.) On her post-Olympics tour, she performed only skills she could land safely. And then, for close to a year, she stayed away from the sport.
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