Reassessing Simone Biles Withdrawal

Harris initially judged Simone Biles' Olympic withdrawal as 'snowflakery' akin to tennis players quitting over press pressure, but revised his view upon learning she was a victim of the gymnastics abuse scandal and, more importantly, that gymnastics is fantastically dangerous—losing spatial orientation in a vault can leave one a quadriplegic—so no outside observer is in a position to second-guess an athlete's game-time decision about their fitness to perform something genuinely dangerous.