Simone Biles, who made a convincing case for the title of the greatest gymnast of all time after racking up four gold medals at the 2016 Olympics, had a far tougher go of it at the recently concluded 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Only 24 years old but with loads of mileage on the sinew and joints of her 4-foot-8-inch frame, Biles stumbled repeatedly during the qualification rounds yet still managed to qualify for the finals of each individual gymnastics event. From there, however, matters took a turn for the worse.
During the team final, when the U.S. faced a significantly upgraded Russian team that would win the gold, Biles struggled to execute multiple twists on an Amanar vault. Beset by doubts about her ability to maintain air awareness while performing twists and encouraged by fellow Olympian and star tennis player Naomi Osaka’s decision to withdraw from the French Open earlier in 2021, Biles proceeded to withdraw from four additional events.
During the four days before Biles returned to win bronze in the balance beam event with a lower-difficulty routine than she had originally planned, members of the media hurried to laud her for being “very human” while remaining “the GOAT” (Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina, who won a men’s-and-women’s record 14 Olympic medals in gymnastics between 1956 and 1964, always remains conspicuously absent from discussions centered on Biles and Nadia Comaneci). After Biles won the bronze, she told reporters now scrambling to reframe the narrative that her victory meant more than all the golds she had previously won because she overcame so much to win it — not only the “twisties” but the recent death of her aunt as well.
It makes sense that the language used by Osaka and Biles to justify their withdrawals is similar. Such therapeutic discourse, rife with references to “taking time for myself” and “talking about it,” permeates the miasmal air of a culture in which, as of 2019, nearly 20% of the population received some form of mental health treatment and 16% took prescription medication for mental health issues.
“I was already feeling vulnerable and anxious, so I thought it was better to exercise self‑care … anyone that has seen me at the tournaments will notice that I’m often wearing headphones as that helps dull my social anxiety,” Osaka remarked of her decision to exit stage left from the French Open. Upon withdrawing from the team finals in Tokyo, Biles told NPR that she wanted fellow athletes to “put mental health first. … It’s OK sometimes to even sit out the big competitions to focus on yourself because it shows how strong of a competitor and person that you really are rather than just battle through it.”
“Mental health activism represents a huge market for sponsorships and earnings that will extend long after sporting careers, which can be very short,” explained Zack Moore, a sports contracts expert and author of Caponomics: Building Super Bowl Champions. “Colin Kaepernick offers a good example for how to do this, transitioning from a career as a quarterback whose value was based primarily on running skills that were declining to a consistent, recurring multimillion-dollar role as a spokesman for social justice employed by Nike in part to sanitize the company’s own questionable social justice record.”
To be fair, stepping back from a sport and then spotlighting mental health issues has a fairly long history. Jimmy Piersall, a Boston Red Sox center fielder in the 1950s who had All-Star talent but a history of unusual in-game behavior and occasional trips to inpatient mental health facilities, put together a 17-year career in Major League Baseball that was as notable for his battle with bipolar disorder as it was for his stellar fielding and slick hitting. In his 1955 memoir Fear Strikes Out, which later became a feature film, Piersall acknowledged the pecuniary value of publicly dealing with mental health issues. “Probably the best thing that ever happened to me was going nuts,” he wrote. “Who ever heard of Jimmy Piersall until that happened?”
In his own autobiography, veteran pitcher and ligament replacement surgery pioneer Tommy John recounted Piersall telling him something similar. “I’m way past my prime, but I’m making forty grand a year … because people come out to the ballpark and expect to see me go crazy,” Piersall allegedly said to John. “So every once in a while I’ll give them a thrill and do something nuts, like sit on the outfield fence or argue with an umpire. Just enough for people to enjoy.”
Tennis players and gymnasts need to stay in the mix as they age and their skills decline, too. The former may play at tournaments year-round, but only a handful of those attract major media attention, while the latter enter the spotlight at best once every four years regardless of how their non-Olympic international events turn out. For even the greatest of stars in those two sports, each outing taxes one’s body and reduces one’s shelf life.
“Olympians who maintain intra-Olympic popularity are able to become famous for being famous,” explained Ian Douglass, who co-authored several autobiographies of notable pro wrestlers and mixed martial artists. “It’s less about the competition. If you establish yourself as a familiar, likable brand, your athletic prowess ceases to matter at all.”
For Douglass, an athlete working their way into the world of brands and sponsorships by any means necessary has made a shrewd move. “Simone Biles competes for roughly one hour every four years,” he said. “One hour that is publicly viewable. The bulk of her public affirmation and exposure comes via commercials and articles featuring her. Once she establishes dominance, her brand is less about what she does during a gymnastics competition and far more about what she establishes as her image during commercials. After all, the commercials are what truly establish her identity to a public that generally doesn’t care about gymnastics.”
Sports contract analyst Zack Moore concurred with Douglass’s assessment of the state of play. “You cannot compete in sports forever, but you can begin differentiating yourself in the sports marketplace in other ways,” he said. “When your body is starting to go — and it will, it happens to everyone — and you’re realizing you can’t win with strength and talent, consider turning that weakness and vulnerability into a strength. Sell the strength of weakness. I don’t think that’s the right thing to do, but mental health is a booming business. Everyone who isn’t pumping iron in a gym or rolling around on a jiu-jitsu mat like me claims to be ‘dealing with issues’ and ‘talking about it.’ So if you want money, make like Marshawn Lynch and ‘get yours before you get got.'”
Oliver Bateman is a journalist, historian, and the co-host of the What’s Left? podcast. Visit his website: www.oliverbateman.com.
