" To me , it felt tacit , almost like destruction . "
Simone Biles’s new Netflix DocumentarySimone Biles: Risingis an intimate look at the decorated gymnast’s journey back on top to the2024 Paris Olympics.
Today, the popular streaming platform debuted the four-part docuseries highlighting the passion, dedication, and heartbreak that goes into training for the Olympics.
Fans will also get to see how “social isolation” from COVID-19, media pressure, and hermental healthled to Simone’s decision towithdraw from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
In the first episode, which is filled with never-before-seen footage, Simone fumbles during a warmup vault where she landed awkwardly. She then performed a somersault, which commentators criticized as “bizarre.”
“As soon as I did it," Simone recalled. “I was like, ‘You’ve got to be shitting me, like right now, really right now, we’re going to do this?’”
“I knew from that very moment that it wasn’t just, like, one time and done, ‘cause I feel like you can feel it in your head.”
Simone revealed she could feel something was wrong and she didn’t know how to tell her team and her family that it was “bad, bad.”
“To me it felt silent, almost like death, and if I could have ran out of that stadium I would have,” Simone added. “But I was like, keep it cool, calm, collected, don’t freak anybody out, let’s go over and be like, ‘We’re done here.’"
There’s a moment in the Netflix special where Simone, who’s widely considered the greatest gymnast of all time, is shown breaking the news to her mom back in Texas. Despite the support she received from family, friends, coaches, and teammates, Simone was still the subject ofbacklashand media pushback for her decision.
“Having these mental blocks in the gym recently, I’m getting lost in my skills…I just don’t get how. It’s like I’m so prepared, I don’t know if I’m overthinking, but it’s getting to the point where it’s becoming dangerous, I’m getting lost in all my floor skills.”
“Afterwards, I kinda felt like I was in jail, my own brain and body, just like, I just feel so ashamed.”
You can learn more about Simone’s journey in Parts 1 and 2 ofSimone Biles: Rising, which is now streaming on Netflix. The final parts are set to premiere this fall.
Be sure to watch before Simone and the rest of the Team USA women ’s gymnastic exercise team head to Paris for the2024 Summer Olympics .
Netflix
