Considering she dominated the ‘16 Olympics and everything since, i highly doubt its nerves.
“Demons,” she calls them. They seep in and make her question everything. They take the joy of what she loves more than anything, that she’d loved since she was a bouncy 3-year-old jumping off her living room couch, and make them about something else.
Doubt. Fear. Insecurities. Pressure. Failure.
Therapy and medicine, she said, usually keep the demons at bay. Yet here inside the Ariake Gymnastics Centre, here in the middle of an Olympics where she was the main attraction, here at the start of the team finals, they were back, stronger than ever.