I really like sports movies, so this was right up my alley. Everyone knows who Simone Biles is and what she's achieved. But I didn't know much at all about her journey. This was a dramatized movie, so I'm not sure which parts of the plot were fictionalized. However, I was surprised that her gymnastics path wasn't so easy, aside from the abuse of the team doctor that was uncovered after the 2020 Olympics. I had kind of assumed that was the only gymnastics-related obstacle.
Assuming this aspect is accurately portrayed in the movie, I didn't know that she struggled for awhile with gymnastics itself in training and competitions, that the mental aspect was hard for her, and that she really had a hard time with the sacrifices she had to make to pursue gymnastics. In a way, it was reassuring that she's human - the media portrays her as larger than life, and it's helpful to think of her as someone just like you and me, who had an extraordinary talent, but who also suffered and worked incredibly hard to get to where she is. Her success wasn't just handed to her, and she wasn't born just being able to do all of this, and this movie does a good job showing what she had to give up and that she wasn't always sure and confident. She grew a lot, and it's motivating to see that challenges can be overcome. Another theme that was important to me was the importance of keeping what you do fun, even as you work as hard as you can at it. If it isn't fun anymore, then all of that work is meaningless and it's so much harder to succeed.
