The Olympics are coming up, and they're coming to TV, which means we'll soon be seeing, along with cute little spots on Parisian lifea panoply of informative short films about (mostly) American athletes, introducing us to their families or their childhood dreams or tragedies overcome, so that we can invest more fully in their quests for gold.
If you’re looking for a deeper, more thoughtful, less superficial documentary, I highly recommend “Simone Biles Rising,” a truly inspiring two-part documentary premiering Wednesday on Netflix. To be precise, it’s the first half of what will be a four-part documentary, with a yet-to-be-written conclusion coming in the fall. Directed by Katie Walsh, the series has drama built in, as Simone Biles returns to the Olympics after having withdrawn from the 2020 Games after her mind disconnected from her body, leaving her literally lost in space. There’s a word for that among gymnasts: spins. (Her teammate Joscelyn Roberson compares it to getting on a roller coaster, closing your eyes, and finding yourself on a different roller coaster.)
But there’s more here than that obvious, if obviously fascinating, comeback story. (At 27, Biles will be the oldest American woman to compete in Olympic gymnastics in 72 years.) “Rising” looks at what makes an extraordinarily talented person an ordinary person, rather than the other way around; it’s a portrait of an articulate, self-possessed, outspoken and good-humored young woman, a daughter, sister, teammate, friend and newlywed (to Green Bay Packers player Jonathan Owens; they’re cute together and not just because he’s more than a foot taller). Crucially, she’s a survivor of sexual abuse, one of hundreds of victims — and one of the most outspoken — of the infamous Larry Nassar, the team doctor now serving a life sentence. It’s a trauma she relates to as she breaks down in Tokyo; therapy and recovery are a theme of the film.
Fans of documentaries about female sports superstars may recall the equally intimate “Naomi Osaka,” from 2021, also on Netflix, about the tennis star who withdrew from the French Open and then Wimbledon, citing mental health issues. People who tend to view athletes as less than human — or more than human but not quite human — may not fully attribute that mentality to them, or if they do, they may view the brain as simply an instrument to winning or an obstacle to winning, when the pressure to win can be getting in the way of a life. And as the winningest woman in her sport, Biles has known that pressure.
The series, which follows Biles from her breakdown in Tokyo to the gates of Paris, is sympathetic to its cooperative protagonist. What more could you ask for? She doesn’t seem like someone who needs excuses or makes them up herself. The opening episode, “Write Me Down in History” (“I always knew I wanted to break boundaries and statistics”), wastes no time getting to the low point: “Your body can only function for so long before you blow a fuse.” (“Really?” she recalls thinking. “We’re going to do this right now?”)
After she was publicly criticized, with pundits and Twitter users calling her a quitter “who couldn’t even do a cartwheel”; the widespread support she received didn’t register as strongly as the criticism and self-criticism. (Her memories of Tokyo are locked away in a “forbidden” closet in a room she rarely enters.) But “Rising” makes clear what casual observers of the sport may never consider: that it is potentially more dangerous than a broken bone. “Most of the time I’m just trying not to die,” Biles says of executing the extremely difficult Yurchenko double pike, without exaggeration. It now bears her name, the fifth element named after her, after she landed it at the 2023 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, the first woman to do so.
Featuring commentary from Olympic medalists Aly Raisman, Svetlana Boguinskaia, Betty Okino and Dominique Dawes, it’s also a brief history of women’s gymnastics, the place of Black women in it and the toxic environment that governed American gymnastics for decades, created by the strict, harsh, autocratic and “military” coaches Béla and Márta Károlyi, along with others who sought to emulate their success. Things have improved by the looks of it: Biles’ current coaches, Laurent Landi and Cécile Canqueteau-Landi, seem more concerned with her well-being than her medals.
Biles is so skilled that you don't have to have any interest in gymnastics to find her art fascinating; it's just a matter of fact that she can spin, flip and tumble in combinations that no other woman has ever managed. There is something akin to magic in what she does, and like magic, it is all the more impressive for being the result of human discipline and ingenuity. She has expanded the range of what is possible, and there is a beauty and emotion in her performances that is unmatched by any other aesthetic experience.
