Epic Athletes--Simone Biles by Dan Wetzel

Author:Dan Wetzel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)

8

Worlds

SIMONE HAD COMPETED IN A FEW international meets, but nothing like the World Championships.

The competition, the pressure, the stakes at hand, it could all prove overwhelming. Here were the best of the best, not just in the United States but all the historic gymnastic powers around the world, such as Aliya Mustafina of Russia, Yao Jinnan of China, Larisa Iordache of Romania, and Vanessa Ferrari of Italy. Some of them were former World Champions and Olympians with far more experience.

And now Simone was on unfamiliar ground, in Antwerp, Belgium, where the food is different, the hotels are different, everything is slightly different.

In Simone’s new effort to remain calm, she came up with two tricks to keep her grounded in what otherwise was the most stressful and uncertain week of her life. One was simply to not worry about what she didn’t know. Fear of the unknown is a powerful emotion. It’s also mostly pointless. Why let something that may not even happen impact how you prepare for what you know will?

“She said she had never been to Worlds before so she didn’t know what to expect,” Aimee said. “She said, ‘So I’m not going to be nervous.’”

That helped. So too did her idea of making sure she looked at Martha just before each routine. Martha had a way of grounding her, making it all seem like they were back in Texas at a training session. The rest of the arena, the crowd, and the noise would just fade away.

“I knew if I had her in my line of sight, I wouldn’t mess up,” Simone wrote in Courage to Soar.

Simone was aided by the rotation of events—up first was vault, where she felt comfortable and where nearly two years of pushing herself to attempt more difficult moves could pay off. Kyla Ross was clean on her double-twisting Yurchenko to earn a score of 15.366, but Simone followed that with an Amanar—basically a two-and-a-half-twisting Yurchenko. She took the lead at 15.850. Degree of difficulty paid off.

Kyla would prove to be Simone’s chief competition. The California native was tall for a gymnast, nearly a foot taller than Simone. As such, she is considered a more fluid and eloquent gymnast, something that was a big advantage before the scoring system began rewarding the difficulty of routines. That change in scoring evened things out for powerhouse tumblers such as Simone.

Despite being competitors, the two had become great friends—“best friends,” Simone said—throughout the process, so while they were fighting for a World Championship, they were also supporting and encouraging each other.

Kyla proved slightly better on the bars—15.100 to 14.700—but Simone still led halfway through. Simone then delivered an excellent beam routine, including a front aerial that led to a split jump and a dismount featuring two back handsprings to a full twist double back. She was pleased with her 14.433. Kyla was just a bit more perfect, scoring a 14.533 and taking a slight lead of 0.16.

Last up, however was floor, which was ideal for Simone. Kyla’s routine couldn’t match Simone’s in terms of difficulty.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.