Simone Biles is opening up about how she felt after she suffered the “twisties” while competing at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2021.
The phenomenon occurs when a gymnast loses track of where they are in midair, making it hard to safely land. It happened to Biles while she performed her vault routine before she landed on the mat.
“So, I open landed like that and as soon as I land, I kind of grin and I’m like, ‘S---,’” she said in a preview clip, provided exclusively to TODAY.com, from her interview on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. The full episode will be released April 17.
Biles is the most decorated gymnast of all time, but withdrew from multiple events in Tokyo after the twisties episode. She said she believed everybody was going to have it in for her after letting them down.
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“America hates me. The world is going to hate me. I can only see what they’re saying on Twitter right now,” she recalled thinking at the time.
“And I salute and I want to run. If I could’ve gotten on a plane and flown home, I would’ve done it. I thought I was going to be banned from America ‘cause that’s what they tell you: ‘Don’t come back if not gold. Gold or bust. Don’t come back.’”
Biles, who's discussed her mental health struggles in the wake of what happened in Tokyo, is eyeing a return to the Olympics this summer in Paris.
Last October, Hoda Kotb asked her on TODAY what the odds would be of Biles being part of Team USA in the Olympics if Hoda were to wager $100 on it at that point in time.
“I think you’d be pretty lucky, Hoda,” Biles said before smiling.
A month earlier, in regard to going to the Paris Olympics, Biles said on TODAY, "Right now, I would say that’s the path I would love to go, so I wouldn’t mind if you put it in the ‘yay’ section."
Biles also said she's made a point of being more diligent when it comes to looking after herself since Tokyo.
“I think I have to take care of myself a little bit more and listen to my body and making sure that I’m making time for the important things in my life, rather than before, it was just ‘go, go, go,’ and then making time after,” she told TODAY in her September interview.
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