This makes no sense. Simone couldn't individually "lose" the TEAM competition, which is what she withdrew from first. However, if she performed poorly, she could have cost the ENTIRE team a medal. By withdrawing, she gave the rest of team, including the alternate, a better chance to medal, which they did.
If you don't think the alternate trains just as hard as the other girls, you are misguided. All of them are equally as prepared to compete, precisely for situations such as this. The alternate had no competitive disadvantage because Simone withdrew at the last minute.
Withdrawing from the all-around was an individual decision. Maybe she didn't want to "lose" that, but her withdrawing opened the door for another US gymnast to win the GOLD medal, which she did. Arguably, if Simone was in top form, she would have walked away with the gold. Withdrawing from the all-around had absolutely no negative effects on her teammates.
With the exception of a hypothetical scenario where the team ~might~ have won gold instead of silver had Simone competed, she didn't cause the team to "lose" anything. The only one who lost is Simone because she didn't get any medals. But if she was truly not fit to compete, then the team was better off without her. Since they did get a silver medal.
Also, if anyone actually cares, here is the story behind her withdrawal. And it's backed up by other gymnasts who say it's a very real and very dangerous phenomenon.
"When Simone Biles attempted her first skill of the gymnastics team event at the Tokyo Olympics, a 2 twisting vault, she quickly knew something was off.
Biles, 24, later explained to reporters that she "had no idea where I was in the air," and that she was "having a little bit of the twisties."
That term is familiar to gymnasts, who know it as a phenomenon where they lose their understanding of where they are in the air, putting them at risk of injury when they land. Biles made that clear in her post-competition comments, saying, "I could have hurt myself."
Carly Patterson, all-around gold medalist at the 2004 Athens Olympics, said during a Twitter Space hosted by PEOPLE on Thursday that she knew "exactly" what Biles was talking about.
"You basically start losing that air awareness," Patterson said. "It is very, very scary, especially when you're doing the difficult kind of skills that Simone is doing. [You] have no clue when you're going to hit the ground and how you're going to hit the ground."
Six-time All-American Katelyn Ohashi, who went viral for her floor routine as a gymnast for UCLA at the 2019 NCAA Championships, agreed, adding that the twisties are "not something to play with."
"She can't just go into a soft surface," Ohashi said, referencing how Biles could have landed off the mats. "When you have that doubt going into your head, anything can happen in that moment."
Biles has talked about struggling with the twisties before. In June, ahead of the Olympics, she said in an interview with Glamour that one of the toughest skills for her to learn has been a double-double flip on the floor, because she "would just get lost in the air."
"It took me a long time for my air awareness on that skill," she explained.
While Biles' decision to withdraw from the two events came as a shock, Patterson points out that you can't plan for the twisties: they just happen.
"Unfortunately it happened at the Olympic Games, it didn't happen three months ago when she could fix it, work those kinks out, work that mental block out," she says. "You can't do that in 24 hours, when you're at the Olympic Games, and rework your brain through that to really overcome it in such a short time."
The bronze medalist in the all-around, Russia's Angelina Melnikova, told reporters after the event that she's experienced the twisties too.
"I had similar problems when I was a kid and its really, really hard to get rid of this problem," she says. "It's very confusing and hard."
