How Simone Biles Flipped the Global Economy of Awe—and Landed on Our Last Nerve
Simone Biles and the Global Collapse of the Superhuman Myth
By our correspondent in a city that still believes medals cure inflation
Somewhere between Tokyo’s cardboard beds and Paris’s bedbug-ridden mattresses, Simone Biles decided that a quadruple twist with a side of existential dread was one trick too many. The planet, already short on heroes, gasped in unison—then promptly split into two camps: those who hailed her as the patron saint of self-care, and those who felt personally betrayed that a 4-foot-8 Texan refused to keep cartwheeling for their entertainment. Both reactions, naturally, missed the point, which is that the international economy of awe has been running on fumes for years.
Let’s zoom out. In the grand bazaar of geopolitics, athletes have become sovereign brands minted by Nike, validated by Visa, and occasionally audited by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. When Biles vaulted out of the 2021 team final, she didn’t just land on a mat—she crashed straight into the WTO of feelings, sending futures contracts in Schadenfreude spiking on the Frankfurt exchange. Overnight, op-ed writers from Lagos to Ljubljana discovered the phrase “mental health” and used it with the same solemnity usually reserved for terms like “supply chain disruption” or “crypto winter.” It was touching, in the way a multinational’s ESG report is touching: glossy, well-lit, and 100 % recyclable.
Meanwhile, authoritarian regimes experienced a brief moment of panic. If the American who can defy gravity decides gravity is negotiable, what’s next—Xi doing a stately pommel-horse routine while confessing that lockdowns were merely performance art? The Kremlin hastily scheduled extra ice-dancing propaganda to reassure citizens that Russian athletes never under-rotate, let alone under-feel. Across the Pacific, Japan’s Olympic Committee quietly thanked the gods that their own gymnasts still adhere to the national policy of smiling through compound fractures.
But the larger tremor was subtler. Biles exposed how thoroughly we’ve outsourced our collective resilience to a handful of chalk-dusted prodigies. We expect them to absorb every national anxiety—race, gender, geopolitical ego—then stick the landing with a grin. When she said “no,” the entire Ponzi scheme wobbled like a balance beam after three energy-drink sponsorships. Suddenly, every overworked nurse in São Paulo, every underpaid coder in Bangalore, and every barista in Berlin nursing a master’s in philosophy had a new retort for their group-chat tyrants: “If Simone can take a mental health day, so can I.” Productivity prophets called it the Great Refusal; HR departments called it a scheduling nightmare.
Europe, ever eager to regulate the human condition, convened a subcommittee on “Athlete Emotional Load Harmonization.” The draft directive, leaked last week, proposes a 24-hour cooling-off period after any gymnast experiences “existential vertigo.” Enforcement will be handled by a multinational task force featuring one stoic Swede and a rotating chair from whichever country currently has the lowest youth suicide rate—so expect the seat to remain empty.
Back in the United States, cable hosts oscillated between calling Biles a quitter and canonizing her as the second coming of Harriet Tubman, only with better leotards. Nike’s share price dipped, then rebounded once marketing realized “Just Don’t” could be a whole new campaign. Somewhere in Silicon Valley, a start-up is already prototyping an AI coach that detects burnout using wrist-based cortisol sensors. Early beta testers report the app mostly advises them to “try yoga” before forwarding their data to life-insurance actuaries.
The planet keeps turning, albeit slightly wobblier now that we’ve admitted its finest acrobat is, in fact, human. The next Olympics will still happen—Paris has already stockpiled enough bed nets and antidepressants to host the Games and a simultaneous plague. Biles herself may return, chalk up, and twist once more into collective fantasy. Or she may open a goat yoga studio in Belize and sell NFTs of her own yawns. Either way, she has done something quietly revolutionary: reminded a world addicted to superlatives that limits are not flaws in the system; they are the system.
And if that ruins your office betting pool, well, consider it the first honest transaction you’ve made all year.
