PARIS — Simone Biles will leave these Olympics with four medals and a big smile, three more medals and a lot more tears than she did in Tokyo. Noah Lyles has already won a gold medal, in the race he had the least chance of winning, and could walk away with three medals. If you’re wondering who gets the credit for the extraordinary performances of these extraordinary human beings, the answer is obviously you.
Well, maybe not. You, More specifically. But you, sports fans. If the last two Olympic cycles have taught us anything, it’s that sporting events are theatrical performances, not laboratory experiments. The public doesn’t just watch competitions. It’s part of them.
Athletes say they want to shut out the noise, but when they’re competing, they need it. Biles’ mental health crisis and case of the turns in Tokyo began when she was alone with her thoughts. On the track, the outgoing Lyles inexplicably stopped in his 200-meter semifinal, costing him a prime lane in the final, and nearly a spot in it. He finished with a bronze medal in his signature event and broke down in tears in the mixed zone afterward.
There’s no way to know what Biles and Lyles would have done in packed arenas in Tokyo. But we now have enough evidence to make a very educated guess. After Biles fell off the balance beam on Monday, denying herself a chance at the podium, she said that even these Olympics were too quiet for her. The fans were loud before and after, but the audience was quiet during the exercises.
“The beam final is always the most stressful, but usually we have music or background noise or whatever,” Biles said. “Honestly, we do better in louder environments because it feels more like a practice. We asked a couple of times if we could have music. I don’t know what happened there. It’s not our favorite. None of us liked it… yeah. It was a weird beam final.”
She wasn’t really complaining, about that or anything else. One of the most beautiful things about Biles’ journey is that she finally seems to have a healthy relationship with her own celebrity. She enjoys the attention but doesn’t let strangers define her success. She still notices the haters but she seems to find them amusing. She realizes that the Olympics are stressful enough without worrying about what other people think.
Biles won three gold medals and a silver in Paris and is enjoying them all, even the silver, which came after a shaky (for her) performance on the floor exercise, which she was favored to win.
“You never know with gymnastics,” Biles said. “I’m not really mad or anything. I’m actually really happy and proud, and even more excited that it’s over, even though it’s stressful.”
After Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade won the gold medal in the floor exercise, Biles was thrilled for her.
“I can’t say enough good things about her,” Biles said. “I love Rebeca. She’s amazing. She’s so amazing. She’s the queen.”
A queen doesn’t need a king, but Lyles could still volunteer for the role. He’s a self-promoter, which isn’t to everyone’s taste, but if you look closely enough, what appears to be egomania is actually a hunger for human connection. After the men’s 100 meters ended in a photo finishA self-centered athlete would have kept his distance from everyone, for fear of feeling the shame of finishing second. But as Lyles waited for the results, he said Jamaican Kishane Thompson thought Thompson had won.
Lyles can handle losing. But the isolation takes its toll on him. He was never himself in Tokyo, and when he cried after the 200, he said he was thinking of his brother, Josephus, another sprinter who didn’t make the team. Families weren’t allowed to travel to Tokyo, and Lyles missed his family terribly.
Lyles is in a better place now, mentally and literally, at these Games. With Biles finished and the swimming competition over in Paris, Lyles will be the American star for the rest of the Olympics. After Lyles found out that he, not Thompson, had won the 100, someone asked him about the 200. He started to say he would win the race, then said, “I’ll leave it there,” then decided that stopping there was not a very Noah Lyles thing to do. He practically guaranteed he would win the race, and he should win it. All eyes will be on him, which is exactly how he likes it.
