Can you bounce back from a mistake?
In sports, the answer often depends on the arena. In basketball, the highest field goal percentage ever recorded was 49.1% during the 1981-1982 NBA season. NBA stars have a comfort of being allowed to miss every other shot and still win the game. Mistakes are part of the game and it makes it similar to the real life. Development and innovation through failures and learning.
This is however not a comfort given in gymnastics. While basketball players can afford to miss, gymnasts like Simone Biles face a different reality. They are not allowed to make a single mistake to win the competition. This demand for perfection is intimidating. You prepare many years, improve, develop but when the competition starts every failure can jeopardise all your efforts no matter how many times you have been perfect before.
Simone Biles is the best of the best in this unfriendly world. She has done the things no woman has done before. In a sport where perfection is the norm, Biles has not only excelled but redefined what is possible. Five gymnastics elements were named after her, and only one of them was done successfully by other people. This is not just a skill, it requires ability to cope with fear as all those moves are extremely difficult and dangerous.
"I probably done 100 Yurchenko double pikes, and the first one and then the last one I've done, they all feel the same. Scary." Simone Biles
Coping with pressure
This unbelievable performance elevated expectations from everyone watching her. She said in the Netflix documentary: "Now everywhere I show up, I am expected to win". The pressure of external expectations can be debilitating.
"It's easy being underdog " Simone Biles
In Tokyo, the world watched as Biles made the unprecedented decision to prioritize her mental health over competition. "I had to do what was right for me," she said, highlighting the immense pressure she faced alone due to Covid restrictions. Her vulnerability revealed the often unseen mental toll of perfection.
There was a lot critique coming towards Simone Biles after Olympics in Japan, and I wonder - how many of us have been put in this kind of situation? How many times you were told - no mistakes are allowed?
Thriving in such environment requires extraordinary level of mental toughness. According to the Netflix documentary she always had her family support and it might have been the missing ingredient in the alone trip to Tokyo. Might have been, but even with all the support the pressure on those athletes is extreme.
Fighting back
After doing my research for this post, I have watched Olympics competition in Paris with different lenses. Balance beam is probably the most striking as the margin of error is extremely low in this event. Simone Biles fell of the beam in Paris and lost her chances in this competition. Some other competitors have fallen of the beam as well, but they all kept smiling, came back on the beam and continued what was already a lost cause, tough cookies and one can only wonder what they really felt.
Simone Biles performed however Yurchenko double pike on the vault (vault Biles II), won three gold medals in Paris, including the most prestigious All-Around title. I think that after a stunning disappointment in Tokyo, she made one of the greatest comebacks in the modern sport history - if not the greatest!
Credit: AP Photo/AJ Mast
Reflections
Can high expectations help you to reach the sky? They certainly can although according to Daniel Kahneman more often they make people disappointed and unhappy.
"One recipe for a dissatisfied adulthood is setting goals that are especially difficult to attain." Daniel Kahneman
You can have your own, internally developed expectations, or expectations can be imposed by others: parents, teachers, coworkers, fans. I think that external ones can be even more pressurised. We should remember this when we put expectations on someone else. It makes it more difficult for them and makes also you dependent on someone else's performance, which you don't fully control.
Simone Biles mental breakdown in Tokyo and spectacular comeback emphasises the importance of social support. The family played important role in both events. It is difficult to be resilience alone, much easier if your people have your back.
Next time you will face a challenge remind yourself gymnasts on the balance beam not allowed to fail, and ask yourself if it is really that difficult.
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References and Notes
Simone Biles Rising. Documentary series. 2024
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