LinkBiles
From a gymnast friend regarding Simone Biles 🐐❤️ pic.twitter.com/4eWPIgi4yf
— Brandon Marino (@TheBatMarino) July 27, 2021
LinkBiles
From a gymnast friend regarding Simone Biles 🐐❤️ pic.twitter.com/4eWPIgi4yf
— Brandon Marino (@TheBatMarino) July 27, 2021
My heart goes out to her. Everyone has a breaking point. She reached hers. I hope she enjoys happiness and good health going forward. I suspect that the moment she made the mistake the other day was actually a good thing for her; it allowed her to throw off the shackles of the expectations of others. She is human, after all.
Stephen Taylor at July 27, 2021 9:55 PM
> after all.
Y'know, for some of us there was never any doubt.
Much more written but deleted
Crid at July 28, 2021 3:08 AM
Miguel Duhamel once won the Daytona 200 motorcycle race, on the 188HP Honda RC30, with a broken leg, his foot wired to the footpeg.
We can be and I am sorry that she failed, but winning through adversity is real.
That the battlefield is simulated and not inherently deadly does not change things: Do, or do not. There is no cry.
This will be an excellent opportunity for virtue-signallers to cry out when Simone does not.
Radwaste at July 28, 2021 3:52 AM
Our heroes play through adversity - e.g., Jack Youngblood playing the Super Bowl on a broken leg or Kerri Strug landing on a bad ankle. They "take one for the team."
"Winners always want the ball, when the game is on the line." ~ Gene Hackman (The Replacements)
But, they also put the team ahead of their own concerns when it's "crunch time." Only Biles can say if her sitting this one out was better for the team. Only she knows where her head was. Only she knows if she was the difference between the team getting a gold medal and the silver one it won - or none at all.
In the meantime, the feel-good story for this Olympiad is Hidilyn Diaz, a weightlifter who won the first Olympic gold medal ever for the Philippines. The island nation sent only 19 athletes to Tokyo; and this one set a new Olympic record.
Conan the Grammarian at July 28, 2021 5:14 AM
Look, many years ago, I resolved not to care about those people, and you can't make me. Your toxins, fire, spears and hounds don't intimidate! Since the times of Korbut and Spitz (from my hometown!), I've seen that these silly little people were unremarkably ambitious snots whose cliched personal narratives were presented on television for shut-ins and illiterates in need of drama in their lives.
Serious!
But still, I just saw a picture of Biles biting a new gold medal, even as the headline itself noted that she was withdrawing from further competition. (Or someone if it. Wut-evaaaaar, okaaaaaay?)
And I think that's noteworthy because having achieved a (presumably) bankable level of proficiency and a lifetime of broadcast-commentary expertise in her sport, she now (again, presumably) feels like she needs to protect her simulacrum of interpersonal relationships with her generation of social media fans by demonstrating some consequential inner turmoil.
Athletes are by definition some of the most competitively self-interested people on the planet.
I hope Conan's general point is the one that holds for the long-term: That real champions fuckin' win.
These championships are happening to other people: If they make it too complicated, it's difficult to feel even casual interest, let alone admiration. Not everything needs to be about Facebook and Twitter and Reddit. And Amy's comments.
Crid at July 28, 2021 8:27 AM
Note the word "lucrative" in the 2nd graf, because maybe not.
In this decade, everything must bow down before social media. Hail Zuck!
Crid at July 28, 2021 8:40 AM
The most revolutionary comment anyone, anyone can make this year is: …But *I* have feelings, too!
The paradox is lost on many.
Crid at July 28, 2021 8:45 AM
Cosh is even bitterer; it's always been difficult to keep up.
Crid at July 28, 2021 8:47 AM
Kid already has like a zillion olympic medals. She now has the twisties. Risking her life for one more makes no sense. Hope Jade gets one.
NicoleK at July 28, 2021 11:28 AM
This looks like a fun house:
https://3d-marketing.captur3d.io/view/keller-williams-louisville-east/8800-blue-lick-rd
Sixclaws at July 28, 2021 12:18 PM
Risking her life?
Crid at July 28, 2021 12:53 PM
I believe Nicole may be referring to Julissa Gomez, an Olympic-level gymnast who was left a quadriplegic in a vaulting accident and later died from her injuries. The injuries occurred at a meet in Tokyo, no less. Gomez was two months shy of her 19th birthday when she died.
Biles is 24 and has probably done as much in gymnastics as can be done. It may be time to look around for something else. I would have preferred she had stepped down before there was a team depending upon her but, as I opined earlier, only she knows where her head is right now and what effect she would have had on that team's chances.
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While I am in awe of the technological advances that make them possible, I really dislike Matterport tours.
Conan the Grammarian at July 28, 2021 1:44 PM
A few minutes after the earlier comments, there was a passing thought for the many competitors Biles must have dispatched in her competition for a spot on this team. Were there dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? I know nothing, zilch about the hazards of the sport, but presumably all those girls & young women faced the same years of risk, and suffered the same 'incidental' injuries, in their own pursuit of the quadrennial opportunity she's so abruptly and irrevocably surrendered.
…Some of them might be all WTF.
And then minutes after that, Drudge or someone offered a headline, paraphrase 'Biles sponsors are sticking with her.'
Well, in the era of social media, that suggests a 25-second phone call between the CEOs and their PR operatives in instantaneous concurrence: We're going to eat the money.
But we can picture sports agencies and representative attorneys dreaming up new clauses for the contracts of 2024 and evermore, and drooling for the billable hours of their negotiation.
Crid at July 28, 2021 2:42 PM
> I really dislike Matterport tours.
We've discussed it, and I think the webside dollhouse was enormously helpful in getting a sensational price for my place in the most difficult imaginable circumstances. (But also, all my stuff had been removed before the photography; and the Realtor P-shopped younger, hipper furnishings into the conventional stills.)
The thing most tragic about Six's link is that from a
Well, two things:
First, you can see from the sky view, before it zooms in, what the problem is going to be.
And before you lose heart and close the browser a few seconds later, you'll note that it doesn't seem like a senior's home; it doesn't seem to be a typical case of widowed Uncle Ernie struggling at the end without Millie.
This is a tough planet.
Crid at July 28, 2021 2:49 PM
I don't let my girls do "real" gymnastics. I let them do tumbling, and we have a trampoline, and that's enough risk for me.
I recall that a professional football player quit a while back because he was concerned about his physical health, and that decision was controversial.
It would have been nice if she quit before the competition, but I doubt she knew things were going to get bad. I've walked into a situation that I was completely prepared for and accustomed to and had a bought of anxiety that left me with the shakes. (And since then, I have had similar situations where I was fine!)
ahw at July 29, 2021 11:17 AM
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