Honestly I wouldn’t like to speculate, she has so many reasons available, all are valid for her. With Naomi Osaka suffering from the pressure (and lots of other high profile cases) perhaps we will rethink?
What we can do I don’t know but I do know the expectations are impossible.
Yeah, I was thinking of Ms. Osaka too. 
I didn’t mean to speculate or minimize the multitudes of pressures those athletes are facing. I recently read an interview with Ms. Biles where she mentioned that the adrenaline of being in front of a crowd seemed to add explosive strength to her routine, and that’s what made me wonder about the lack of audience.
It’s positively awful, and has been for the past couple decades at least.
Just as an example, the fucking opening ceremonies. Some of the performances were really hard to watch because while they were clearly intended to be watched from a distance, yet there’s about 5 seconds of overhead shots showing the routines in context, and then 5 minutes of close-up shots where you can’t really make anything out. Then there’s the parade of nations, which are often jam packed with the kind of commentary that makes me feel dumber as a result of having heard it. My teeth were grinding just waiting for the commentators to use that same “hey, check out Djibouti” joke again this year and it thankfully didn’t come to pass. And FFS is it so hard to air the entire thing without breaking for a commercial every few minutes or split screening the parade of nations to do interviews and stuff? It’s kind of funny – the commentators made a note about how because there was no crowd noise that you could easily hear the athletes talking as they entered the floor during the parade, and of course you couldn’t hear any of it because they were talking over the whole damn thing. I also don’t need explainers every 5 minutes about what’s going on. Just let me watch the damn thing uninterrupted. Again, its wasn’t as bad this time around as it has been in previous games but it was still miserable. The opening ceremonies in general were pretty meh this year even without the terrible commentary, but the pictograph segment was absolutely delightful and a highlight of the entire show.
Beyond the awful coverage of the opening and closing ceremonies, the actual presentation of the games is just a mess. There’s wall to wall coverage … as long as it’s American athletes. About the only time you see any coverage featuring other countries is when it makes for good storytelling – such as a rivalry with an American athlete. The only time there’s any coverage of events outside of the most mainstream ones like gymnastics and swimming is in the form of quick vignettes (and only if it’s interesting – like the brother and sister gold medalists in judo). With the time delay it’s really easy to heavily edit everything and cynically package it up to be as commercially-friendly as possible in prime time. Sometimes there will be a passing mention of something happening in some sport and my first reaction is, “wait they are doing that this time around I’d love to see that!” only to be unable to find a feed of it anywhere.
So, yeah, it’s terrible.
I really despise NBC’s stranglehold on Olympics coverage and how awful of a job they do every cycle.
Yeah, that pretty much exactly sums up what it’s been like for me, and why I worked so hard to get the CBC/OBS feeds.
The OBS feeds especially are wonderful because they’re entirely nonbiased and show the entire events. If you have access to a VPN that’ll appear to come from Canada, I highly recommend the CBC’s feed for this: Upcoming schedule and past results - CBC Tokyo 2020
Most of the event recaps are raw OBS feeds.
I am also posting this on Continuing Coronavirus Happenings…
Many prefectures in Japan are reporting record high numbers of new infections today, including the entire capital region: Tokyo (3177), Kanagawa (1051), Saitama (870) and Chiba (577). For the first time ever, the number of daily new infections nationwide has surpassed 9,000.
And they are still going ahead with the fucking Olympics.
This tweet in the article is pretty illuminating:
Love that. Should be widely distributed.
Short version: there are precious few human beings who are even close to being able to do what Simone Biles does and they’re all at the Olympics supporting her.
Can’t seem to find the original video but Quinta Brunson’s take from a couple years back is more relevant than ever…
What place did you get today!!!
I am in LOVE with that young woman! Nailed it. Totally. And handed his ass to him so many times, because he was too clueless to realize how many times she plowed right over him.
This is actually new information, to me at least:
I warn people before they go to Japan to double check all their medications. You can’t even bring in things like melatonin, for example, or other OTC medications.
OMG, was that a real interview?
Quinta nailed it 
Coming back at the end, icing on top!
And people wonder why athletes don’t want to do post-competition interviews. They can eat my shorts (or bikini bottom, depending on the sport 
)
No, it was a sketch she did in response to the frustrating tendency of sports commentators to treat Olympic accomplishments (especially by Black athletes) as failures if they were anything less than 100% perfection.
Now I wish I hadn’t asked. I’m gonna just pretend it was real, bc I wish it so. It’s like my religion. 
(Really, I wish it weren’t even necessary, but in our current reality, more like this, please!)
I am glad to see that the Refugee entrants are doing so well in the Olympics. Is this the first year where those with refugee status are competing?
