Los Angeles (AFP)

"I should have given up long before Tokyo," Simone Biles, an icon of American gymnastics, whose mental health problems had led her to give up several Olympic Games this summer, told New York Magazine, cracking under the pressure. pressure of the moment.

“If you look at everything I've been through the past seven years, I should never have been on another Olympic team,” said Biles.

Considered the greatest gymnast of all time, Simone Biles revealed in January 2018 to be one of the victims of the former doctor of the American women's team Larry Nassar, sentenced to life in prison for sexual assault committed during two decades on more than 250 gymnasts, most of them minors.

“When Nassar was in the media it was too much. But I wasn't going to let him take something I had worked for since I was 6 years old. I wasn't going to let him take that joy away from me. So I pushed beyond what I could, for as long as my mind and body allowed, "she explained.

In Tokyo, the 24-year-old young woman was to be the superstar of the Olympics.

But when she began her medal raid, she had suddenly stopped, the victim of "twisties", a potentially dangerous phenomenon which makes gymnasts lose their sense of direction when they are in the air.

She ended up competing in an event, gleaning bronze on the beam.

Simone Biles John SAEKI AFP / Archives

“Let's say that until you are 30, you can see perfectly. And one morning you wake up, you can't see anything. But people tell you to keep doing your job as if you still have your sight. right? ”Biles said.

“I did gymnastics for 18 years. I woke up - lost. How am I supposed to continue?” Continued the one who won a total of 32 medals at the Olympics and world championships.

Biles, who had previously said his anxiety problems came before Tokyo, hopes to help end any stigma, so people can be diagnosed faster and treatments can improve.

“It will probably be something that I will work on for 20 years,” she said.

"I just want a doctor to tell me when I'll be healed. Like when you have an operation and it's fixed. Why can't anyone tell me that in six months it's over?"

© 2021 AFP