2 years after Tokyo, Simone Biles is coming back from 'the twisties.' Not everybody does

For years in gymnastics, the phrase "the twisties" was usually uttered in hushed tones, as if saying the slang term for an athlete's sudden loss of air awareness during a routine would only deepen the problem.

"It's almost like a mythical kind of thing," longtime Oklahoma men's gymnastics coach Mark Williams said. "When someone says 'the twisties,' everyone shudders because it's bad."

Then Simone Biles said it in front of the whole world two summers ago in Tokyo, after a sudden onset of the condition early in the pandemic-delayed 2020 Olympics forced the sport's biggest star to pull out of several competitions — including the team and all-around finals — to protect herself.

That won't be an option on Saturday when Biles competes for the first time since Tokyo in the U.S. Classic in suburban Chicago. The 26-year-old Biles is on the start list for all four events, including uneven bars, which she acknowledged on her Instagram stories feed this week has been the most difficult discipline to return to "both mentally and physically" because the routines are essentially 45 seconds of uninterrupted flipping, floating and twisting from bar to bar.

Biles could decide at any time what she's comfortable doing and not doing at this point, though the most decorated female gymnast of all time added "I'm fine. I'm twisting again. No worries. All is good."

However this weekend or the next 12 months in the run-up to the 2024 Paris Olympics — if it gets that far — goes, simply making it back to this point is a victory in itself.

Not everyone does.

A month or so after Biles raised the conversation about "the twisties" and the mental health issues associated with them, Gage Dyer was training in Oklahoma and eyeing a spot at the 2021 world