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USA Gymnastics doesn't know who called Simone Biles a 'gold-medal token.' That's unacceptable.
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- USA Gymnastics doesn't know who called Simone Biles a 'gold-medal token.' That's unacceptable.
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Simone Biles deserved better from USA Gymnastics. Still does.
The four-time Olympic champion said after her triumphant comeback at the U.S. Classic earlier this month that someone from the federation had told her at the Tokyo Olympics she was their "gold-medal token." Already feeling stressed from the massive expectations on her, along with the isolation created by COVID restrictions, the suggestion heightened Biles' anxiety.
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That anxiety, of course, manifested itself in the twisties , causing her to lose her sense of where she was in the air and jeopardizing her physical safety. Unwilling to put herself in harm's way, she withdrew from the team competition and four individual event finals before returning for the balance beam final , where she won a bronze medal .
"I was really disappointed to hear that," Li Li Leung, the president and CEO of USA Gymnastics, said Wednesday ahead of the national championships here. "And, frankly, that was the first that we had heard of it. We don't know who said that. So I can't tell you whether they're still with us or not.
"But I can tell you that we do not tolerate that behavior," Leung added.
Yes, but if you don't know who it was, how can you be assured the behavior isn't continuing? Or won't in the future? Like at, say, next summer's Paris Olympics, where, if Biles competes , she'll command an even bigger spotlight than she did in Tokyo?
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And if it wasn't important enough for Leung to find out who was crass enough to say that to Biles, can you really insist, as Leung often does, that USA Gymnastics has turned a corner on the indifference that caused harm to so many athletes in the past, Biles included? If this truly is a warmer, fuzzier USA Gymnastics, one where athletes feel free to advocate for themselves without fear of repercussion, how did Leung not know someone in the organization was seeing — and treating — Biles like a meal ticket?
Simone Biles looks on during podium training before the U.S. Classic.
Biles was out of competition for 18 months after Tokyo, but the gymnastics world is a small one. A comment like that has a way of making the rounds. Even if it didn't, it's hard to imagine the attitude behind it wasn't obvious to, well, everyone at the time.
If athletes come first, as Leung pledged Wednesday, there can be no bigger priority than making sure they're not being treated like commodities, their only worth coming from their results and the prizes they bring.
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"I apologize to Simone that she had to endure that kind of treatment while on site in Tokyo," Leung said.
That's nice, but it's not enough.
It's possible Leung does know who the person was but is limited, for whatever reason, in how much she can say. But then say that . She doesn't have to name names — Biles wouldn't — but she needed to say something that showed she and USA Gymnastics recognized how toxic the environment had to have been for someone to think it was OK to tell Biles that.
Leung's answers Wednesday fell short of doing that.
"With the new leadership in place, they understand saying things like that is unacceptable to our athletes," Leung said. "We make that clear."
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Again, that's nice. But it's not enough.
USA Gymnastics is not yet at a place where it can be given the benefit of the doubt. Athletes, and the public, need to know athlete safety and well-being come before everything else, and saying, "We don't know who" told Biles she was supposed to be a medal machine suggests USA Gymnastics simply didn't care enough to find out. That it didn't think it was that big a deal.
It was. Even if USA Gymnastics' past culture didn't foster the kind of environment that allowed a predator like Larry Nassar to operate or abusive coaches to go unchecked, no athlete should be treated as insensitively as Biles was.
"I think going into (Tokyo), I really was doing it for me and then there were all those outside noises and everybody telling me, 'You're our gold-medal token' and all of that stuff. And that's from our inside team," Biles said after the Classic. "That was really tough."
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There is no question USA Gymnastics has made strides in changing its culture — "I think it's turning around," Biles acknowledged earlier this month — and it wants nothing more than to distance itself permanently from its dark history.
But to fix your flaws, you have to know what they are. And who is responsible for them.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour .
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: USA Gymnastics fails in response to comment directed at Simone Biles
