Verified by 
Key points
- Osaka asked for boundaries related to time and privacy in regards to mental health. Biles asked for boundaries related to her body and wellbeing.
- Osaka and Biles show that everyone has physical and emotional needs as well as limitations, and that setting limits is often met with pushback.
- Having professional athletes articulate their needs and separate themselves from expectations may enable others to set their own limits too.
When I name a world-class tennis player, an Olympic gymnast, greatest of all time, and dare to put myself in the headline — that’s gutsy. I have not just one but two support cushions on my office chair just so I can Zoom all day. To put myself in the general vicinity, even just in typed words, of these two phenoms feels a little wrong.
But it also feels quite right. Because Osaka, Biles, and I are all humans. We are all people who have physical and emotional needs, as well as physical and emotional limitations. Sadly, we are also all people who happen to receive a lot of pushback when we say, “I’ve had enough.”
We also happen to all identify as women, which I do think is important to state. It is stunning to me (in 2021) how uncomfortable individuals and society are with women drawing boundaries.
When I woke up today to the news that Biles had taken bronze on the balance beam, I couldn’t have been happier. How truly remarkable to say “no” one week and come back the next and say “yes, but in the way I can.” What an example that is for all of us. As sports journalist Dan Wetzel writes, “Biles delivered a steady, strong routine and while she was, no doubt, trying to win gold, this was as much about competing, and overcoming, than anything else. That a medal came in the end was an added bonus.”
Boundaries of body and mind
Osaka and Biles asked for different kinds of boundaries. Osaka asked specifically for boundaries related to her time, her use of her self, and privacy related to mental health. Biles asked for boundaries related to her body and her overall well-being.
In July 2021, Osaka wrote a piece published in TIME where she stated: “There can be moments for any of us where we are dealing with issues behind the scenes. Each of us as humans is going through something on some level.”
What she asked for was privacy to deal with mental health concerns and flexibility — what she framed as “sick days” — for doing so, no questions asked. (I won’t use this space today to write about how far we have to go in mainstream workplaces in making her wishes come true, though I will commend her for challenging, as she states “the tennis hierarchy” to do better.)
Just a few weeks after Osaka’s piece, Biles would make a choice to stop competing in the Tokyo Olympics to, quite literally, save her life. Wetzel writes, “Biles cited a lack of ‘air awareness’ or what gymnasts call ‘the twisties’ that make trying to complete extremely difficult moves extremely dangerous.”
Biles’ story recalled the story of Elena Mushkina, a story retold in the New York Times:
Before Elena Mukhina broke her neck doing the Thomas salto, a skill so dangerous it is now banned, she told her coach she was going to break her neck doing the Thomas salto.
But her coach responded dismissively that people like her did not break their necks, and Mukhina, a 20-year-old Soviet gymnast, didn’t feel she could refuse. Besides, she recalled later in an interview with the Russian magazine Ogoniok, she knew what the public expected of her as the anointed star of the coming Olympic Games.
“I really wanted to justify the trust put in me and be a heroine,” she said.
Less than a month before the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, Mukhina under-rotated the Thomas salto and landed on her chin. She was permanently paralyzed and died in 2006, at the age of 46, from complications of quadriplegia. After her injury, she told Ogoniok, fans wrote to her asking when she would compete again.
“The fans had been trained to believe in athletes’ heroism — athletes with fractures return to the soccer field and those with concussions return to the ice rink,” she said. “Why?"
The history of women’s gymnastics is strewn with the bodies of athletes like Mukhina, who sustained life-altering or life-ending injuries after being pressured to attempt skills they knew they couldn’t do safely or to compete when they didn’t feel up to it. On Tuesday, withdrawing from the Olympic team final after losing her bearings in the middle of a vault and barely landing on her feet, Simone Biles effectively said that she refused to be one more.
I share this story here because it demonstrates a direct connection between pushing athletes too far and their physical injury and death. Osaka’s advocacy has focused on setting limits as they relate to preserving her mental health, the wellness that allows her to compete in a way that we want to watch. How devastated would we all be if the headline we read, instead of “Simone Biles withdraws from Olympic competition,” was “Simone Biles paralyzed” or “Simone Biles hospitalized for mental breakdown.”
Pushing back against expectations
Osaka and Biles have said, loudly, clearly, powerfully: It is my job and my responsibility to know my limitations and to express what is best for me. My personal limits are mine to set, even when there might be impacts on greater systems.
For Osaka and Biles, pushing back against established norms for professional athletes has caused more than a stir. It started a revolution. To have professional athletes — particularly young women of color — articulate their own needs and separate themselves from the financial and social expectations connected to the history of professional sport is revolutionary.
But perhaps more importantly, the actions and words of Osaka and Biles have reverberated far and wide, meaning regular people are able to think, and maybe even one day say, “Yes, I too can set limits. I too have value as a person that’s greater than any role I play in society. I too know what’s right for me.” We should not have to wonder, as Biles did, if our only value is in what we create for the world to consume.
What do we value? What is the limit we are willing to let someone set for themselves? Do we need to see someone lose their physical status, their ability to walk, to move independently? Do we need to push someone so far that they need to withdraw from their life in order to get what they need?
I really hope bronze can be the new gold, and that we can embrace that it’s ok not to be ok.
Copyright 2021 Elana Premack Sandler. All Rights Reserved.
