Simone Biles is an Olympian without equal, a gymnast so great that moves once thought impossible now bear her name. But being great isn’t easy. On the eve of the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, Simone Biles: On the risea new four-part documentary on Netflix, gives us a look at the success and struggles of the American star.
SIMONE BILES: ON THE RISESTREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: The pressure to be excellent can be overwhelming. That’s a constant in Simone Biles: On the risea four-part documentary that provides tremendous access into Biles’ life. Interviews with Biles, those close to her, and figures from the sports world are interspersed with competition footage. Together, they tell the story of her rise and her struggle with the demands one faces at the top of the sporting world.
What movies will it remind you of? Netflix is gearing up its sports documentary content ahead of the Paris games, and a recent comparison is its excellent track-focused documentary. piqueBut while that series focuses on a group of elite athletes, Simone Biles: Rising is, unsurprisingly, about just one.
Performance worth watching: Are you actually watching someone else when Simone Biles is performing? Come on, focus on the game.
Memorable dialogue: “I knew it wasn’t like, ‘Oh, oops, sorry,’” Biles recalls thinking after her first failed vault attempt in Tokyo. “I was like, ‘How am I supposed to tell them this is so bad?’”
Sex and skin: None.
Our opinion: Simone Biles is one of the most decorated gymnasts of all time and arguably (or even inarguably) the greatest athlete the sport has ever seen. There are currently five different moves in the women’s artistic gymnastics scoring system named after her. She’s the kind of athlete other athletes look up to and appear on magazine covers, cereal boxes, and record books. “I don’t think anyone in any other sport has ever been that dominant, ever,” marvels Biles’ U.S. Olympic teammate Joscelyn Roberson. “It’s like an NFL team never losing the Super Bowl.”
Simone Biles: On the rise However, it does not begin with a triumph.
The spectre of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (held in 2021, due to COVID) looms large over Biles’ present. She was expected to dominate the Games as she had five years earlier in Rio de Janeiro, but Biles instead introduced many viewers to the dreaded notion of “the spins” — a sudden inability to orient oneself in the air that can prove devastating to a gymnast’s performance and even dangerous to her well-being. She withdrew from the Tokyo Games, shocking the sports world and citing mental health issues.
The tension at that moment provides a starting point for the true story of Simone Biles: On the rise– that of the immense pressures placed on top-level athletes, pressures that began long before we ever saw them step onto the track at the Olympics. Those pressures were only intensified by COVID restrictions during the Tokyo Games. As former gymnast Onnie Willis recalls, “I immediately said, ‘She’s on her own. ’ For example, the fact that athletes have to travel without family, without friends, without their network, and that massively underestimates the importance of connection and community to our physical performance and our possibilities.” At that point, the years of intense, militaristic training that future Olympians go through really came to a head.
Simone Biles: On the rise But this isn’t a story of victimhood, but of an athlete reclaiming her story. Following her withdrawal from the Tokyo Games, she faced an onslaught of criticism from commentators and fans, some of whom accused her of abandoning her team. It wasn’t fair or right at the time, but Biles has the stature to fight back. This documentary is a great look inside the life of a great athlete, but it’s also a statement: she won’t let others tell her story. She’s here to give the full picture.
Our calling: STREAM IT. Not every athlete deserves a documentary, but Simone Biles is no ordinary athlete. Simone Biles: On the rise This is a well-crafted document by one of the best to ever do this.
Scott Hines, editor of the much-loved Action Cookbook Newsletter,is an architect, blogger, and Internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky.
