In all sports, in all mixed areas, it is the most recurrent question.
“Will you continue until the Games of Paris 2024?” It is normally questioned to veteran athletes, even those who only have around 30, and everyone responds to their run.
It is such a topical theme that, even before standing before the microphones, they already know what to say about it and explain without further.
But on Tuesday, when Simone Biles heard the question of Marras, she seemed surprised.
Or distressed.
Or simply exhausted.
He closed his eyes very slowly, he opened them again and said, “I do not know what I will do in 2024, I do not know how my future will be like. My only plans are to work on myself, which is something I had forgotten, and heal me.”
Neither did not, namely.
Although something is something.
Until a few months ago it was assumed that the last Bilos competition would be the tokyo 2020 games. Despite his young age, 24 years, after a lifetime in the gymnastics he was going to dismiss with four, five or six Olympic golds
, a triumphant tour throughout the United States and enough money on the bank and would become a coach, or commentator, or what she wanted.
But in April, in an interview in the New York Times, she already left the possibility of arriving to Paris open.
“Cecile and Laurent [Landi, her coaches] are from Paris and they are already telling me that maybe I could go there only in some appliances,” she pointed as she already warned that she felt tired mentally and that not everything was so well
As it seemed.
“Before coming here I felt in a good way, physically it was very good,” he repeated on Tuesday in an affirmation that may be able to take him to postpone his withdrawal.
Until the mental blockade of him in the team competition, Biles had not only dominated the gymnastics, he had changed it.
With the performance of it in the 2019 Stuttgart World Cup and the invention of new pirouettes, she was prepared to bring her sport to another dimension in games and that is still a pending task.
After what happened, getting shining on an Olympic appointment can be a nice goal, a retake, self -omen and do it in advanced age and would be multiplying the difficulty of it.
Biles will arrive in Paris with 27 years, an age in which most gymnasts are already withdrawn.
The other day in the complete contest, only three were above: the German Elisabeth Seitz (27), the Switzerland Giulia Steingruber (27) and the German Kim Bui (32).
And on Tuesday, in the balance bar, he won the gold La China Chechen Guan, only 16 years old.
With the support of the French coaches of her, Biles could be launched to enjoy the Paris games to do what she has not been able to have these days in Tokyo and doing it with more years in the legs.
It would be a brilliant finish for a bright race.
But before, as she herself said, she first she must take care of herself and be healed.
