This weekend’s Simone Biles performance will demonstrate the evolution of women’s gymnastics

Simone Biles, a world-renowned gymnast, competes in the US Classic this weekend for the first time since she was forced to withdraw from numerous events at the Tokyo Olympics in July 2021 due to a “the twisties” attack.

She kept her ideas under wraps until a few weeks ago, but now she claims she can twist just well. She may be back to her record-breaking best, capable of completing the Yurchenko double-pike vault, which no other woman has ever done, according to results from an untelevised national training camp.

In addition to all of that, there’s another reason to be happy: Biles’s comeback provides more proof that gymnastics’ previous culture, which at times cruelly and bizarrely infantilized competitors, may be dying.

Biles, 26, may be referred to as “old” for her sport by pundits. It has been commonly stated that female gymnasts typically enter the sport as teenagers and leave it shortly after. But the reasons are hardly discussed.

Jessica O’Beirne, the long-running GymCastic podcast’s host, stated that having a strong strength-to-weight ratio is a requirement for gymnastics. “Right now, power and strength—more specifically, power—are the focal points. If you don’t have the power, you can’t perform the necessary gymnastics.

Weight was the main focus back in the day. Athletes were under pressure from coaches to eat less to lose weight, and thin was frequently a sign of prepubescence. The TV commentary of previous events provides the best documentation that a small, infantile frame was the ideal; gymnastics aficionados now gleefully share around video of the poorest specimens.

One sports documentary stated about Nadia Comaneci and her coach, “She would prove Bela Karolyi’s theory that to wait until after puberty was to waste the best of their years.”

When Comaneci, just 14 years old, earned a perfect 10 at the 1976 Olympics, she enthralled the globe. The world feared she had outgrown the sport in 1980 when she was taller and had the physique of a young woman, not a girl.

Svetlana Boginskaya was described by a commentator as having put on weight prior to the 1991 European Championships. However, she still managed to take first place in the tournament, proving her strength. She’s back here in great shape and appears even skinnier than before.

An odd defence of Tatiana Lysenko, the reigning Olympic beam champion, was made in 1994 by a television analyst. “Many viewers would certainly glance at her and exclaim, ‘Oooh she’s a big girl!’ yet she’s actually a very, very shapely young lady. On television, it’s really challenging to determine these gymnasts’ sizes.

In addition to being harsh and harmful, the pressure to maintain a small figure doesn’t last over time. It puts athletes at risk for the female athlete trifecta, which includes having less energy, a lowered bone density, and missing their period (or having it irregularly). Stress fractures and other severe injuries may result from that.

Jennifer Sey, a national champion in 1986, has spoken about surviving on a diet of lettuce and apples while being coached by a man who yelled, “I don’t coach fat gymnasts!” She admitted to CNN that she competed for two years with a broken ankle.

The 2010 world silver medallist Mattie Larson revealed to me that she once competed after only consuming two Toblerone triangles that day. I felt really exhausted. At the end of practise, I always thought I was going to faint, said Larson. “I started taking so many laxatives every day when I was about 15 or 16. My practise emphasis was insanely different from gymnastics. Don’t pee your pants in your leotard, it was like.

Larson sustained numerous wounds. She said that she gravely hurt both of her feet at a national training camp. “I had to stay the rest of the camp crawling on my hands and knees,” recalled Larson.

Some coaches, according to podcaster O’Beirne, have learned from prior errors. “One of the things that has completely changed is how vital nutrition is now recognised by the public. You will have broken bones frequently during your career and won’t be able to endure what it takes to recover from numerous Olympics if you don’t have your nutrition and if you don’t receive your period early enough, she warned. The athletes who have excelled the most were already in possession of adult bodies. Despite being 4’8”, Biles is unmistakably an adult.

Nowadays, gymnasts lift weights in several nations. Ellie Black, a Canadian gymnast, shares videos of herself “entering beast mode” on Instagram. O’Beirne attributes Black’s longevity to her weight training.

.

Black, who is 27 years old, has participated in three Olympics and won two medals in the world championships last year. The Olympic gold medallist Jade Carey, who is 23, and Jordan Chiles, who took home three medals at the world championships last year, are both competitors with Biles this weekend who defy the stereotype of the prepubescent teen.

Similar to Biles, Carey and Chiles can extend their reach from the vault farther for greater execution points, and they can add additional twists to their routines for higher difficulty scores. Chinese women gymnasts, who frequently have less strong physiques, haven’t taken home an Olympic or world championship medal on vault in more than a decade.

O’Beirne claimed that certain athletic administrators are still fixated on how skinny gymnasts are. She claimed that a representative from USA Gymnastics named a promising gymnast and remarked that she had “the international look,” which has long been a slang term for slim. O’Beirne admitted, “I laughed out loud because I assumed he was kidding. He was unaware that this was a hazardous phrase.

But as she pointed out, gymnasts are now far more exposed to the outside world. “The body pride that college athletes have now is something we did not see in the past,” she said.”They were able to in some ways because of social media because they were like, ‘Oh, I’m very hot, and I’m going to share a bunch of photographs of my butt because I’ve worked really hard for that butt and it looks fantastic.’ Yes, on the one hand – male gaze, etc. However, if they had looked like that back in the day, they would have been body shamed and dismissed from a squad. Now they don’t, though.