All about the ‘twisties’ and how Simone Biles overcame them to make it big in Paris

After winning gold and bronze in the 2024 Paris Olympics women’s gymnastics individual all-around final, Simone Biles and Sunisa ‘Suni’ Lee spoke to reporters about teamwork, doing the work, and diamond-encrusted goat necklaces.

Vault is one of Biles’ best events. She has two skills named after her on the apparatus and has put up some of the highest scores at international competitions.

But at the Tokyo 2020 Games, the vault was an opponent of its own.

Biles faced a mental block common for gymnasts, called the twisties.

The twisties are a type of gymnastics block where the athlete loses sense of where their body is in the air and how they’re twisting. Since the ability to have spatial and air awareness is crucial for success and safety in the sport, having a case of the twisties can be extremely dangerous for the gymnast.

One of Biles’ teammates from the 2016 Olympics, current NBC Olympics gymnastics analyst Laurie Hernandez, described the feeling to Olympics.com.

“The rhythm is off, and your brain will, like, stutter step for half a second, and that’s enough to throw off the whole skill,” Hernandez said.

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At the team final event in Tokyo, Biles went up to perform her vault, called an amanar. Instead of the usual two and a half twists, she only competed one and a half twists due to the mental block she was facing.

Biles had to withdraw from the remainder of the team final, as well as from the all-around final, floor exercise final and vault final.

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