TOKYO—Simone Biles was in the wrong headspace to compete. She had already fallen. She had hurt her ankle. She tried to push on, but it became clear she was endangering herself by doing so. A choice was made: Biles would be withdrawn from the competition. 

That was at a domestic meet in 2013. It foreshadowed the stunning turn of events at these Olympics, when the most dominant gymnast of all-time left the women’s team final on Tuesday saying her state of mind was jeopardizing both her ability to safely perform, and the medal chances of her teammates. On Wednesday, she said she would not defend her individual Olympic all-around title either.

The gymnast who has shattered so many boundaries and assumptions about her sport has now shattered one more: she pulled herself from the biggest competitions in the world, one of them after it was already underway. She knew the eyes of the world were on her, painfully aware of the judgment she could face. And she did it anyway. 

The two incidents, almost a decade apart, reflect the evolution of Biles. Eight years ago, Biles had to be forced off the competition floor by her then-coach Aimee Boorman. In 2021, Biles insisted to team staff that she was removing herself. 

After being pulled from the U.S. Classic by her coach in 2013, Simone Biles went on to have a very successful year, winning the national, and then world, all-around titles

After being pulled from the U.S. Classic by her coach in 2013, Simone Biles went on to have a very successful year, winning the national, and then world, all-around titles

Photo: AP

Watching Biles’s warm-ups and vault on Tuesday, Boorman realized she had seen this before. And she was grateful to see it again. 

“At that moment, when she pulled herself out,” Boorman says, “I was relieved.” 

The events that unfolded Tuesday were shocking. The U.S. women were favorites to take a third consecutive gold in the team competition chiefly because of Biles. But after Biles seemingly lost herself in the air mid-vault, she disappeared into the bowels of Ariake Gymnastics Centre. She re-emerged, removed her grips and confirmed she was withdrawing. 

Amid rampant speculation about what part of her 4-foot-8 body was so injured it prevented her from competing, Biles had an answer few expected. 

“After that vault, I was like: I’m not in the right headspace, I’m not going to lose a medal for this country and for these girls because they’ve worked way too hard,” Biles said. 

Eight years ago, something eerily similar unfolded in the U.S. Classic when Biles was 16 and just beginning to compete as a senior—a far bigger, brighter spotlight than she’d ever been under before that came with a new frontier of pressure.

She began by missing a catch and falling off the uneven bars. Despite exhaustion, she soldiered on—and her struggles snowballed. She missed all of her connections on the beam in a wobbly performance. She nearly face-planted during her floor routine, hurting her ankle in the process but hiding it. 

Before she could go through her final rotation on the vault, Boorman ended the madness. She pulled Biles out of the competition. 

“Simone, you’re not mentally in the game,” Boorman told her, according to Biles’s book Courage to Soar. 

“It’s when there’s a lot of stress coming onto her,” Boorman says now. 

Back then, Biles was an unknown gymnast competing without a team. She was pulled for her own good in a sport that for a long time was embodied by the legend of Kerri Strug, the injured American who effectively vaulted on one good leg and had to be carried to the podium afterward. 

Flash forward eight years and, after a near decade of sweeping almost every major competition, the world knew her as the GOAT, and was counting on her to propel the U.S. women to a third consecutive team title. Her every move lit up social media. She only continued to increase the difficulty of her skills, and raise expectations, rolling out the hardest vault in the history of women’s gymnastics: the Yurchenko double pike. 

U.S. gymnast Simone Biles is withdrawing from Thursday’s individual all-around final at the Tokyo Olympics, a day after she pulled out of the team competition citing the need to focus on her mental health. WSJ’s Andrew Beaton reports from Japan. Photo: Gregory Bull/Associated Press

Biles had done it all even as she sued her own national governing body and the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee. She had done it on the aches and pains of a gymnast who had been pounding her body almost her entire lifetime, with known toe and ankle problems. And she had done it for an entire year longer than she had ever thought she could hold out, after the Olympics were delayed.

The warning signs and worries flashed as the Olympics finally approached. A shaky performance on the second day of the U.S. Olympic Team Trials was an early warning sign that something was amiss. The U.S. team faced a Covid scare entering Japan when an alternate gymnast tested positive. During team qualifications, the Americans finished second behind the Russians, with Biles delivering a subpar performance and suggesting later that the team’s goal was any medal, not gold.

Then, on the day of the team all-around final, her training went poorly. “They saw it a little bit in practice, having a little bit of the twisties,” Biles said, using gymnastics slang to indicate that her mind was stopping her physically from doing what she could normally do. 

“She was giving us a little heart attack,” said Jordan Chiles, who is also Biles’ training partner in Spring, Texas. 

Biles says she has used therapy and medicine to cope with the pressures on her. “But then whenever you get in a high stress situation, you kind of freak out and you don’t really know how to handle all of those emotions,” she said.  

She added: “I’m one to kind of tough it out to the last minute.” 

So when the team final began, she did her warm-up vault. It was a mess. And when it was her turn, she went up to vault anyway. She signaled that she would attempt an Amanar: a roundoff and back handspring onto the vaulting table, followed by two and a half twists in the air. 

Up high, she did just one-and-a-half twists. She landed, looking like another vaulter, one seemingly on the precipice of disaster. Simone Biles was nothing like Simone Biles. 

She walked over to talk with team trainers. They told her encouragingly, they thought she looked fine. Biles was adamant. No. She was not. “I need to call it,” she told them.

Biles has long been praised for her air awareness. It was her gymnastics awareness that told her something was badly wrong. 

Like a golfer with the shanks, she couldn’t explain why. Unlike a golfer with the shanks, the penalty was a grisly landing instead of hitting into a water hazard. 

“I’ve had a lot of experience with these mental blocks, and they are miserable,” 2012 Olympic gold medalist McKayla Maroney said on Instagram after Biles’ performance was televised. “They are a gymnast’s worst nightmare and they can end your career.” 

“You can’t even understand them, you’re like, ‘Why is this happening to me, why is my body doing something different?’” Maroney added. 

Sometimes, she said, it was from too much pressure. Sometimes, it was from feeling depressed. Sometimes it was from doing too many skills, confusing the body. And sometimes, she said: “They can just happen out of nowhere too.”

Maroney was the greatest vaulter of her era. Biles is the transcendent one of hers. What makes them special is also what makes them even more vulnerable. They’re at more risk from the type of vaults they’re doing, and the speed and height they’re getting. 

Simone Biles competed one vault and then pulled out of the team competition.

Simone Biles competed one vault and then pulled out of the team competition.

Photo: Zuma Press

If a gymnast’s ankle isn’t working right, or her head is in the wrong place, and she flips at speed and it doesn’t work out, she can die. Just as gymnasts know the legend of Kerri Strug, they also know about the gymnasts who have been paralyzed from the neck down from a skill gone horribly wrong.

“Her brain was screaming at her that gymnastics is not safe for you now, and she was wise to listen to that,” says Robert Andrews, Biles’s mental training consultant from 2013 to 2018. “If her brain decided to shut off midair, that could be horrific for her.” 

Biles could not just snap out of it. Continuing risked both her safety and her team’s fortunes. 

“I knew for myself that I had to take a step back,” Biles said. “Four or five years ago, that definitely wouldn’t have been the Simone. I would have gone out there and did whatever. But today, I didn’t want to go out there, do something stupid, and get hurt.”

Write to Louise Radnofsky at louise.radnofsky@wsj.com and Andrew Beaton at andrew.beaton@wsj.com