Defend Simone Biles, but Don’t Glorify Quitting

As I explained last night, Simone Biles had an entirely defensible reason to pull out of the gymnastics competition, a withdrawal that has now extended to the individual all-around competition. CNN’s Elle Reeve adds to the picture of why her problem is such a big one for a gymnast:

[Biles] said in morning practice that she had a little bit of the twisties. The twisties are a mysterious phenomenon . . . Your body just won’t cooperate, your brain loses track of where you are in the air. You find out where the ground is when you slam into it . . . In gymnastics, this is called “air sense.” And Biles is famous for how good hers is. “She’s always had incredible air sense, which is what you need in this sport,” her former coach Aimee Boorman told Houstonia magazine in 2015. “She doesn’t crash very frequently. Other kids, you’ll just see them splat, or get lost in the air. That doesn’t happen with her.”