WATCH: Simone Biles is about to compete in the vault final. Here’s how to watch.
Just before returning to the event that gave her the twisties, Simone Biles shared a powerful message on social media.
Posting an image of her in a meditation on the sidelines at the 2024 Paris Olympics, she wrote “mental health matters.”
It’s a simple message that carries extra weight for the gymnastics great heading into the vault final Saturday.
Vault is one of Biles’ best events. She has two skills named after her on the apparatus and has put up some of the highest scores at international competitions — until Tokyo 2020, where trauma that she’s still struggling to properly define manifested itself in “the twisties.”
After one wayward vault during the team final, she retreated to the back of the Ariake Gymnastics Centre and told mom Nellie Biles on the phone back in Texas “ I can’t do it.”
There was a lot on the line in the moment. She was the face of the U.S. Olympic movement heading into the Games and leaned heavily — if at times with a wink — into the “Greatest of All Time” moniker. She was well aware of the social media attacks that might come — to be honest, the attacks that still come — and she did her best to ignore them. To a point anyway.
Yet rather than hide from her decision, she exposed her vulnerability for all to see.
This year, she already got her redemption – and the shift in her mental health was visible.
There she was halfway through the all-around final, sitting in a chair with her legs crossed underneath her and her eyes closed trying to re-center herself, practicing what she has long preached in front of the U.S. men’s basketball team, Kendall Jenner, plus all the people she knows are only tuning in to see if she will fail.
She won both a team gold medal and the coveted all-around gold medal so far, and isn’t done competing yet.
Biles joked afterward she was “praying to every God out there,” her way of deflecting.
On Saturday, she will compete with upgraded vaults, including one named after her. She is expected to perform her signature Yurchenko double pike as one of her two routines.
For a full schedule of what to watch and which channel each event will air or stream on, click here.
Watch gymnastics live Saturday
Coverage begins at 8:30 a.m. on E! and 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. on NBC 5.