Olympic Gold Medalist Aly Raisman on Simone Biles’ Decision

ALY RAISMAN, U.S. GYMNAST & OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST: I also just want to remind people that Simone Biles is human, and every single athlete, no matter how successful they are, every single athlete has good days and bad days and every athlete has performances they look back, they wish they did better. But to be honest, getting lost in the air, which is — you know, as Simone said, she was going for a two and a half twist and ended up doing a one and a half twist. That’s actually very common for some gymnasts and it would happen to me sometimes in my gymnastics career. It’s just unfortunate that it did happened in the team final at the Olympic games. But, you know, it could have been anything. I’m curious, whenever Simone is ready to share, if she can think about why she got lost. Sometimes there’s no reason behind it. Sometimes you just get a little bit confused in the air. I think gymnastics is one of those sports where, you know, someone like Simone makes it look easy, but it’s actually in fact very difficult. And so, when you think about what she’s actually doing a two and a half twists, sometimes what happens is you’re in the air and you kind of lose track of, have I done a half twist, have I done two twists? It gets a little bit confusing. So, it is in fact actually very common. It’s just — you know, I think it just shows, unfortunately, that even the best athletes in the world, they have good days and bad days and I commend her for her bravery and speaking up and doing what’s right for her and what she felt was right for the team. It’s not easy. But, you know, even the greatest athletes of all time, they’re not perfect and they’re human, too.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Yes. I want to get more to the human side in a second. But first, I just want to ask you to reflect, again, on the fact that her team did pull off a silver medal. And as far as I know, they are obviously not as experienced as her. I think a lot of them, if not all, are first time Olympians. Correct me if I’m wrong. But they actually did, you know, do something amazing. Talk about what it must have been like for them.

RAISMAN: Yes, the rest — I mean, the whole team did an incredible job, and, you know, I think knowing — going into the Olympic Games and knowing you have a teammate like Simone Biles is always an extra confidence booster because you know you can count on Simone’s scores. And so, what happens in the team finals is three girls go up on each event and every single sport counts. And so, there’s four girls on the team. So, one girl is not performing on each event. And so, you know, for example, Jordan Chiles was not supposed to go up on bars and beam, and I’m not sure if Sunisa was supposed to go on floor. I don’t think she was supposed to go last. So, either way, they have been training for this three of three-count style. And so, every single day in practice they’re all going in the same exact order. And the girls that were not thinking about actually performing on those events didn’t even warm up in the morning, so they had to like mentally prepare themselves to go up on the events, which is not easy to do especially in an Olympic team final.  So, there’s already enough pressure, and then last minute when you’re not planning to go on bars or beam or floor and you have to go up, it takes a lot of mental strength to get yourself ready. Especially when you weren’t even able to warmup in the back gym.