The limits of greatness

 Let's hear it out there for the tough guys, the wannabes, the never-weres-but-boy-if-they-had-beens. They know what's what.

One of them hammered out a column calling Simone Biles a "coward", and bragged how brave he was to do so because HE was saying what no one else would.

Several others said she was deserting her teammates, letting her nation down, was mentally weak, only quit because she knew she wasn't going to win this time.

Quitter. Choker. All-time choker. Yeah, the Tough Guys hit every mark.

Of course, at this point it must be noted, as Bill Plaschke of the L.A. Times does here, that  none of them ever won a world championship with broken toes in a sport where toes are, you know, kinda important.

None of them have been the best in the world at what they do, and worn the bullseye that comes with it, since they were 16 years old.

None of them have been so resplendent and singular at their calling that there are actually gymnastics techniques named after them. Or been the public face not only of gymnastics but the Olympic Games themselves. Or been the public face of sexual assault perpetrated by a grimy perv who was protected by her sport's own ruling body until she and others finally stood up and spoke up.

All of that is who Simone Biles is. All of that makes her tougher than you or me or every Tough Guy who swaggered onto the interwhatsis yesterday to sneer at her.

I don't know much, but I know this: Gymnasts at the Olympic level endure physical and mental stress that would leave every Tough Guy out there curled up in a ball weeping. This is true even at the high school level; I have covered enough of it, seen enough knee braces and ankle braces and every other kind of brace, to know real toughness when I see it. 

When you see a kid successfully negotiate a four-inch-wide beam -- try it sometime -- with everything on the line, that's toughness. When you wince watching some slip of a girl in a bulky brace land a vault and not wince ... that's toughness.

Simone Biles?

She's the greatest woman gymnast in history, and nothing that happened yesterday proves otherwise. All it proved is there are limits even to greatness, and Simone Biles bumped up against them. 

Whatever it is that makes a champion just wasn't there when the team competition began, and after one rotation Biles knew it. To do what she does requires a level of confidence unseen in almost any other sport, because in gymnastics the tolerances are so brutally exact. And if the confidence isn't there ...

Well. Suffice it to say it wasn't.

Suffice it to say it all piled up on Biles at once, and she admitted as much publicly. And so she withdrew rather than risk injuring both herself and her team's medal chances. 

Perhaps more than any other sport, or at least as much, gymnastics at the Olympic level is a game of the mind. And if the mind ain't right, not even the GOAT can do it.

Far from letting down her team, as the Tough Guys and clueless claim, she did what she did for the team. And the United States won a silver medal it surely would not have if a not-right Biles had insisted on continuing.

Call that weak if you want. Make all the phony comparisons to other elite athletes you care to. Drag Kerri Strug into the conversation -- Kerri Strug, who famously landed a vault on a damaged ankle to secure a gold medal in '96 for Team USA.

But if you do, don't forget to mention that she only did it because her psycho coach, Bela Karolyi, bullied her into it. And that it ended her career.

Biles, too, worked with the psycho coach at one time. And was violated by Larry Nassar, the grimy perv. And somehow rose above it all to become what she became.

A weakling, according to the Tough Guys. A coward. A quitter.

Damn. The stupid, it burns.