Oliver: Top athletes deserve respect when dealing with mental health issues, too

The connection between the mind and body is something scientists still are trying to figure out. We all know that they are connected, but all of the ins and outs of it remain a mystery.

Highly skilled athletes rely on their mind-body coordination to do things that most of us can only dream of doing.

Think of the precision required to jump off a 30-foot platform above a pool and then do a series of twists and turns and somehow manage to get vertical mere tenths of a second before entering the water. Or a gymnast who performs those same twists and turns, only to land on a series of mats on a floor.

What would happen if that mind-body relationship suddenly didn’t work? What if that diver or that gymnast no longer could get their body to do what was expected? Or what if the way to tell where the floor or water was suddenly wasn’t there? Scary, right? Downright dangerous, right?

So it’s hard to imagine anyone having even a little bit of a problem with U.S. gymnast Simone Biles, who is the best gymnast in the world without argument, pulling out of the team competition at the Olympics in Tokyo.

The official cause is that she needs to take care of her mental health. She has elaborated that she has what’s known as the “twisties” in gymnastics. It also affects divers and other athletes that must rely on their inner sense of where their bodies are in space.

What brings on the twisties is anyone’s guess. They can be overcome … eventually.

Might they have been brought on by extreme stress? Maybe. However, Biles has been dealing with competition stress for a very long time.

Biles has mentioned in interviews that she, like a lot of athletes, is someone who has learned to compartmentalize things. As in, ignore the things that bother you while you go about your business.

In my own case, I used to call it putting it into a box over in a corner somewhere and nailing it shut.

The only problem is that sometimes those boxes do not want to remain shut. And what we’ve put in them finds a way out, sometimes in a physical manifestation.

Biles, if you remember, was one of the many, many victims of serial sexual abuser Larry Nassar, who was the team doctor for USA Gymnastics.

For a long time, Biles said, she didn’t want to admit to herself that she had been victimized. She has recently started to be vocal about it in an effort to hold gymnastics officials accountable and to protect younger gymnasts who are coming after her.

Might some of this also had a bearing on Biles’ current situation? Maybe.

However, Biles does not have to apologize for pulling out of a competition for any reason at all. And she certainly doesn’t owe us an explanation as to what her mental state is.

Clearly, trying to perform high-level gymnastics moves while not fully confident in the response of one’s body risks catastrophic injury. Also imagine the effect it would have had on the entire team’s morale to see their leader being carried off on a stretcher.

Had she “quit” on her team, as some of the critics contend, then she wouldn’t have stuck around to cheer on her teammates during the team competition, all-around competition and the event finals.

I hope we all can agree that no one wants to go back to the days when the coaches of the U.S. gymnastics team bullied teenage athletes into competing on broken legs and with fractures in their necks all for the “glory” of a team gold medal.

Whatever the cause for Biles’ twisties, here’s hoping that she gets whatever help she needs to overcome them. That she can regain the joy she had in defying gravity. In a hopeful sign, Biles announced she would be participating in the event final for balance beam. That she won a bronze medal is miraculous in itself, and just as good as gold.

Even if she had never done another flip, we should all be thankful that we had a chance to see her compete, see her model how to be an excellent teammate and show that even the best athletes in the world need to be able to recognize their limitations.

It’s OK not to be OK. Even at the Olympics.

• Joan Oliver is the former Northwest Herald assistant news editor. She has been associated with the Northwest Herald since 1990. She can be reached at jolivercolumn@gmail.com.