Former Gymnasts Left Paralyzed Are No Stranger to the Struggles Biles Faced

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

TOKYO — When Simone Biles withdrew last week from the women’s gymnastics team competition at the Olympics, most of the world reacted with shock. Jacoby Miles felt only relief.

She recognized the look in Biles’s eyes as she bailed on her vault, stopping earlier than she meant to and only barely landing safely. Biles would later say she had suffered from the twisties, a form of gymnastics yips that leaves its sufferers feeling lost in the air.

Miles, 23, recognized that look because she had felt it, too. She, too, had experienced the twisties. She, too, had bailed on a skill, stopping earlier than she meant to. But she didn’t land safely. Miles fell on her neck. She is paralyzed from the chest down.

“She was brave enough and strong enough, even though it was the Olympic stage, to say, No, for my own safety, physical and mental health, I'm going to step out and make this decision,” Miles says. “I thought [it] was just really, really smart on her part.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/olympics/former-gymnasts-left-paralyzed-are-no-stranger-to-the-struggles-biles-faced/ar-AAMQMIO

[CrispyQ]

1. I had no idea there were so many! -nt

[PoliticAverse]

2. Because you only hear about the successes usually - the world champions and medal winners.

The many failures and permanently injured remain mostly unknown.

[DinahMoeHum]

3. A book that's still relevant from back in 1995. . .

. . .Little Girls In Pretty Boxes by sports journalist Joan Ryan.

Link to tweet

Her Twitter feed:
https://twitter.com/joanryan?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

http://www.joanryanink.com/biography/

Her first book, Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters (1995, Doubleday) was a controversial, ground-breaking expose that Sports Illustrated named one of the Top 100 Sports Books of All Time. It was one of the Top 50 Sports Books of All Time in the Guardian newspaper in London. The Sporting News chose it as one of the top three sports books of 1995.

The book and Joan were featured on Oprah, 60 Minutes, Nightline, the Today Show, People magazine, The New Yorker, the New York Times, Time magazine and other media around the country. The book was published in Great Britain, Canada and Japan and excerpted in Redbook magazine. The paperback version was published in 1996 (Warner) and an updated version was reissued in 2000 and again in 2018 in the aftermath of sex abuse crimes that resulted in a lifetime sentence for USA Gymnastics medical trainer, Larry Nassar.

Little Girls changed the sport of gymnastics. Responding to the media attention prompted by the book, USA Gymnastics developed a handbook for parents informing them about the potential pitfalls of the sport on the elite level, such as eating disorders, serious injuries and abusive coaches. It also developed, for the first time, a training and credentialing program for coaches. . . Little Girls has been widely used in sports sociology classes at colleges and universities.

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