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Simone Biles and the Art of the Tactical Retreat
To be clear: I don’t know if Biles is physically 100%. Reports said that she was seen with her leg taped up after her failed vault attempt, but almost every major outlet is focusing on “mental health”, so this article will be assuming that she is physically fine and bowed out of the team and individual all-around as a mental health check. If that is still interesting, please read on.
The world is definitely a different one for athletes than when I grew up. I mean, the world has changed for all of us, but for people with a modicum of fame, those changes have been night and day from what they were even in the late 90’s. It used to be that print media would run an issue once a day, they would have limited amounts of space for content, any comments would come in the shape of fan letters that might show up a couple days after an incident. Nowadays, being the public spotlight is a constant pressure cooker – – the press has unlimited space to write with, comments and hate mail are instantaneous and personal, every Burke with a phone has a video camera and tries to document your minute-by-minute whereabouts, articles come out by the *hour* containing fact, conjecture, speculation and rumor… Yeah, being famous ain’t much fun right now – – especially given the heightened sensibilities of the public toward anything that can be interpreted as offensive to someone, somewhere, at sometime.
I’m just here so I don’t get fined.
Marshawn Lynch
It’s into *that* world that the world’s young, athletic hopefuls have been thrust. What effect does it have on the psyche? I don’t think you need to look further than Naomi Osaka feeling the need to *publicly apologize* for beating Serena Williams in her first tournament final. Simon Sinek and Dr. Jordan Peterson have done sterling work talking about the effects of constant contact and the internet on the psyche of young people, so I won’t retread it here – – the punchline is that culture is creating kids who are of weaker psyche than in years past, while simultaneously turning the pressure *up* on people who choose to live in the public eye. Combustible elements put under greater pressure, the outcomes become predictable.
In warfare, sometimes the battle calls for a tactical retreat. You aren’t necessarily in the middle of a “fight”, but you know your position is indefensible and if you stay, you will suffer for it, so you withdraw to a more defensible position to lick your wounds, reinforce and come up with a plan for moving forward. “Live to fight another day”, as the saying goes. In many cases, that is what a mental health check is – – a tactical retreat to allow you to recover and come back stronger. However, tactical retreats are not, themselves, heroic deeds, nor are they celebrated. Washington choosing to Winter at Valley Forge, for example – – not only is Valley Forge not a celebrated moment in American History, it was nearly a disaster as disease, exposure and malnutrition took their toll on the fighting force. What *is* celebrated, however, is the formalized Franco American alliance as well as the new discipline and fighting prowess the Continental Army displayed coming out of that hibernation. Compare that to the mythical aura of the Alamo: 260 guys doing the abysmally stupid thing of refusing to give an inch in the face of a 2000 strong army with field artillery, buying 2 weeks for Sam Houston to build and train a proper army — Jim Bowie, David Crockett and Col William Travis all gave their lives for the defense of the Republic of Texas, but they exacted a heavy enough toll on Santa Anna that the following Battle of San Jacinto was over in 18 minutes, as the Texian Army shouted “remember the Alamo!”
Coming back to the sports stars, however, I am finding myself disturbed by the celebration of tactical retreats. Dropping out of a tournament because your head just isn’t in it, pulling out of a competition because your confidence got shaken, letting the press bully you into needing a “mental break”… It may be necessary, it may even be good long-term… But it shouldn’t be treated as heroic. Simone Biles is not a hero for pulling herself out of competition – – she is smart, she may even be doing the right thing for herself, but being heroic rarely involves doing the right thing for yourself. Kurt Angle won a gold medal with a broken neck. Keri Strug won a gold medal with her ankle tendons shredded. Michael Jordan won an NBA Finals game while suffering with the flu… He scored 38 points when he should have been in bed. Curt Schilling won game 6 of the 2004 ALCS with the tendon in his ankle literally sewn in place, bleeding through his sock. These are performances that go down as legendary and heroic because the person in question sacrificed themselves and risked everything to secure the top prize in their field… And they won.
For Simone Biles, she has nothing to prove to anyone – – she has 27 international medals and routinely performs maneuvers that other people would be silly to attempt – – the problem is that here, she acted like someone who had nothing to prove to anyone and is getting held up as a hero or martyr for it. Meanwhile, there is a much more heroic story to be told: namely, three girls who were mostly looked at as “filling out the card” because they would be mixed and matched to compliment the Terminator’s inevitable march to Gold, banded together when they lost their leader, and they captured a silver medal against the rest of the world and their full teams of four. Jordan Chiles, Suni Lee and Grace McCallum should be the real heroes of this story – – they went from competing to be one of the two complementary pieces to the Rockstar to suddenly having to *perform* if they expected to make the podium. Imagine the pressure of going from “if they pick you, just don’t screw up” all the way to “put on the performance of your life in your weakest discipline right now”. I feel like, at the end of the day, we are focusing too much on the wrong person.
Here’s the thing… The gymnastics competition isn’t done. Maybe Simone can get back to where she needs to be in time for the individual disciplines. If this story is one of a tactical retreat and not a complete surrender, she had better hope so. No one celebrates Valley Forge, but without it, the Siege of Yorktown and surrender of Cornwallis never happens. Similarly, let’s not celebrate cracking under pressure – – celebrate what happens in spite of it. Congratulations to Jordan Chiles, Suni Lee, and Grace McCallum on winning your silver medal in the face of insane odds. Doubly so to Suni Lee for stepping in to win the Women’s All Around individual Gold.
–X