Simone Biles suggested Wednesday that sexual abuse by disgraced former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar may have led to her brief withdrawal from Tokyo Olympics events.
Biles first suggested that Nassar’s abuse was weighing heavy on her when she retweeted a supportive message from a gymnastics coach who detailed everything the superstar gymnast has had to deal with over the course of her life.
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In an interview with NBC’s “Today,” anchor Hoda Kotb suggested Biles may have been dealing with the pressure of being the only gymnast wrapped up in Nassar’s abuse to be competing in the Olympics. Biles said she wanted to make sure Nassar’s abuse “wasn’t buried under the rug” but admitted it could’ve added an extra layer of pressure on her shoulders.
“Now that I think about it, maybe in the back of my head, probably, yes, because there are certain triggers. You don’t even know, and I think it could have,” she said.
“I knew that still being the face of gymnastics and the USA and everything we brought, it’s not going to be buried under the rug, and it will still be a very big conversation.”
Biles discussed the Nassar abuse in an episode of the Facebook series “Simone vs. Herself” before the start of the Olympics. She said she had a tough time coming to terms with the idea she was abused.
SIMONE BILES REVEALS SHE WAS DEALING WITH FAMILY TRAGEDY WHILE AT TOKYO OLYMPICS
“A lot of us didn’t go to school, we were home-schooled. So it’s not like we had a lot of people to talk about it with,” Biles said in the episode. “I remember asking one of my friends, ‘Hey, have I been sexually assaulted?’ and I thought I was being dramatic at first, and she said, ‘No, absolutely.’
“I said, ‘Are you sure? I don’t think so.’ Because I feel like in those instances, I was one of the luckier ones because I didn’t get it as bad as some of the other girls I knew.”
She said as she accepted the fact she was abused by Nassar, she started to feel depressed.
“I was like super depressed, I didn’t want to leave my room, and I didn’t want to go anywhere. I kind of just shut everybody out. I don’t know, it was probably hard for me,” she added.
“I remember being on the phone with my agent, and telling my mom and my agent that I slept all the time. Because sleeping was better than offing myself. It was my way to escape reality. Sleeping was like the closest thing to death for me at that point, so I just slept all the time.”
In 2018, Biles put out a statement saying Nassar had abused her.
“I am not afraid to tell my story anymore. I too am one of the many survivors that was sexually abused by Larry Nassar. Please believe me when I say it was a lot harder to first speak those words out loud than it is now to put them on paper. There are many reasons that I have been reluctant to share my story, but I know now it is not my fault,” she said in the statement.
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Nassar was convicted and sentenced to 175 years in prison for sexually abusing Olympic gymnasts.