When Valorie Kondos Field was coaching the UCLA gymnasts, Tyus Edney dropped by practice.
Edney was the Hero Of 1995, the man who salvaged UCLA’s bid for what remains its only NCAA basketball championship since 1975. Now Edney was an assistant coach, marveling at what young women were risking.
“Miss Val, you’re coaching the toughest sport,” Edney said. “There’s nobody to pass the ball to.”
Freddie Mitchell, the UCLA receiver, also watched the women fly without a net. He noted that when he lost concentration, he often took a helmet in the chest. When these women lost concentration, they were looking at gruesome injury or paralysis or worse.
Kondos Field now lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas with husband Bob Field, the former UCLA defensive coordinator. Unlike those who serve up fact-free opinions and are more familiar with Jim Beam than the balance beam, Kondos Field knew exactly what happened when Simone Biles walked away from the team competition at the Olympics.
“They call it the ‘twisties’ but it’s more like the yips,” she said. “It’s a disconnect between mind and body. When you have the yips in golf, you shank the ball. When it happens in this sport you could have the worst possible outcome.
“She was trying to do a 2½ and it became a 1½. She was in the air and she had no idea where she was. Thankfully she could land on her feet. Over the years, she’s learned to mask her feelings, but you could see a deadness in her eyes.”
Kondos Field thinks that America should be celebrating Biles’ unselfishness instead of questioning her patriotism. Had she insisted on competing in her diminished capacity, had she prolonged this glorified game of chicken, the U.S. team probably wouldn’t have medaled at all.
As it was, the team won silver and Biles was the head cheerleader.
Kondos Field also said, “This isn’t really about gymnastics at all.”
On June 21 Tevin Biles-Thomas, Simone’s brother, was acquitted of triple-murder charges from a shooting in Cleveland, on New Year’s Eve, 2018. In the courtroom, a victim’s mother had to be restrained from attacking Biles-Thomas and threatened his life. The online barrage was predictable.
“It’s the external stuff,” Kondos Field said. “She always said she loved being in the gym because it was her safe space, that she could ‘quiet all the noise.’ This time it chipped away at those walls. People think their opinions are innocuous. You could see her begin to unravel at the Olympic Trials.”
It wouldn’t be enough for Biles to augment her stash of 36 international medals, including 27 golds and four Olympic golds. Those who dropped into her world once every four years demanded unprecedented heights, unimaginable rotations.
She was the inescapable Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps of this Olympics. She went there, just her and her suit, seeking energy and finding mockingly empty seats instead.
In so many ways, what happened was gravity’s revenge.
“I remember Stella Umeh,” Kondos Field said. “She had been a Canadian Olympian. It got to the point she would wind up, hold on, and she couldn’t release the bar. We had another Canadian who talked her through it, but it took about a week.
“Your body just shuts down. If Simone comes back in the individual events I expect it to be on the beam and the bars (news broke she pulled out of vault and uneven bars on Friday evening in the West Coast). She has a floor exercise with a double back and three twists. She’s looking down at the floor, coming up to meet her at 100 mph. She has to have faith to stay in the skill, just so she can land on her feet.”
A deafening minority has celebrated Biles’ return to earth. Even if gymnastics were all Biles did, it would be an unspeakable way for a nation to repay someone who took our colors into orbit.
But Biles and so many others were asked to trade their souls for a performance to be graded later. Biles and Coach Aimee Boorman chose to use their power. They refused to be cookie-cut or pigeonholed by the coaches at Karolyi Ranch. Three days after Biles disclosed that Dr. Larry Nassar had abused her there, USA Gymnastics shut the gym down.
“Some people say gymnasts should have more fun,” Kondos Field said. “They don’t understand the level of focus. You see (tennis champion) Naomi Osaka saying she can’t get back to where she used to be emotionally. But she’s not propelling her body into the air. Unless you feel invincible, unless you have that aggressive confidence, you can’t compete.
“And our entertainment isn’t worth Simone Biles risking her life.”
