This Simone Biles situation has reminded me of an old episode of Murphy Brown. The FYI team was covering the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, and Murphy scored an interview with a young Norwegian skater who was the heavy favorite to win the Gold Medal in Women's Figure Skating that year. All the girl could talk about was skating, she was a complete cipher except on the subject of skating. She had no social life, no hobbies, no friends, she was just this total skating drone who couldn't talk about anything except skating.
In the course of the interview, Murphy made her realize that this girl had completely sacrificed her youth and all the things that make life joyful for the sake of this competition, and the girl melted down and realized what she had sacrificed. The girl announces she is dropping out of the competition, and of course, Murphy becomes Public Enemy #1 in Norway.
Then the girl decides to compete, and her performance is a total meltdown, she falls all over the rink, but she is joyful, she is just playing on the ice and falling and playing around like she did as a little girl, recovering her sense of childlike play.
This is not a perfect analogy to whatever Simone is going through. She is by all evidence and accounts a far more well-rounded young woman than this fictional character. And her substantial wealth her endorsements have provided her are all predicated on Gold Medals.
But in the moment of competition, her destiny staring her in the face, something inside of her gave way.
I couldn't possibly imagine what goes on inside the mind of the Greatest Athlete of Her Sport Has Ever Seen.
But now I have another memory - 1972, after Olga Korbut set the world on its ear during the Team Competition and became the World's Darling, after two days of intense attention and public display, completely fell apart in the Individual All-Around competition and finished shattered and in tears. Two days after that in the Apparatus finals, she won two golds and a silver.
That was Korbut's first - and really only - moment in the world's eye, and she collapsed and pulled it all back together in a four day span. Biles has been in the public eye for 4 years now. We'll see if she can relight her fire in the next couple days. I would not be surprised to see her get it back and crush. I would also not be surprised to see her shut it down completely.