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This is Undaunted Life of Man's Podcast.
0:51
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:52
Let's get into it.
0:53
All right, guys.
0:54
I'm going to get into some really big news that has really shocked the sports world.
0:58
But before we do that, just want to remind you, especially since we've got a bunch of
1:01
new listeners to our show, please subscribe, rate, and review.
1:05
That is how this podcast is going to continue to get out to a lot of people.
1:07
Guys, this week, we hit the top 10 on the Apple Podcast and we hit the top like 16 on
1:12
Spotify.
1:13
So that's all because of you guys because we've got a lot of new listeners.
1:15
But every time you subscribe, rate and review.
1:17
And again, if it's four below, I don't want those stars, I want five or move on.
1:21
So if you do that, that'll continue to help this show grow, so we really, really do appreciate
1:25
that.
1:26
So let's talk about the Olympics.
1:27
Okay.
1:28
So obviously, you know what I'm going to be talking about.
1:29
You saw the title of this, but I look forward to the Olympics every time it comes around.
1:33
Not so much the winter Olympics.
1:34
There's a few things I like to watch there, but I love, love, love the summer Olympics.
1:39
But looking at this Olympics coming up, I was really worried about a lot of things that
1:42
were going to be going on about some of the woke protests and the BLM stuff and wondering
1:47
if the team's going to sit or stand or kneel or whatever the thing there.
1:50
So it was a little bit kind of like dumb.
1:51
I was like, why are we worried about this?
1:53
And I think that's reflective in the ratings, you know, being in the toilet right now.
1:56
But one of the number one things I was looking forward to was watching Simone Biles compete.
2:02
She is the number one superstar of this Olympics, right?
2:05
Because if you thought about it in the in kind of the lead up to the Olympics, there was no
2:07
Michael Phelps, you know, it's not American, but for Jamaica, there was no Usain Bolt.
2:11
So it was basically Katie Ledecky was being talked about.
2:15
If you follow the sports that I follow, maybe you're excited about Kyle Dake or, you know,
2:21
gosh, I just like blanked Gable Stevenson and some of those guys, you know, Taylor and
2:26
and all of them.
2:27
I'm sorry.
2:28
I'm going crazy right now trying to remember all the wrestlers, but that's kind of something
2:30
that I enjoy.
2:31
I like watching the wrestling, but it was Simone Biles.
2:34
Everything was kind of surrounded around Simone Biles, okay?
2:37
And I was excited to watch her do her thing because anytime you could be in the presence
2:41
of greatness, that's, that's kind of an awesome thing, even if you're not right there with
2:45
them, even if you're just watching them on screen and Simone Biles is an incredible athlete
2:50
in the things that she can do in a gymnastics competition is just insane.
2:54
I was really, really looking forward to that.
2:56
So Sunday night, I watched kind of the team, the team trials or what are not really the
3:00
trials, but kind of the team competition and not the finals, which was going to be two
3:03
days later.
3:04
So I wake up on Tuesday morning and I'm working out of my home gym and then I look at my phone
3:08
and I see breaking news and the breaking news is that Simone Biles was not going to be competing
3:16
in the team finals, which I thought was really, really odd, right?
3:21
That's, that's horrible news if you're a fan of team USA, right?
3:25
And so it was initially reported that there was an injury of some kind, like, you know,
3:28
a physical injury.
3:29
And so I was like, man, I mean, that really, really sinks for USA, but I hope she's okay.
3:34
And then it became pretty clear that it didn't have anything to do with that.
3:38
It had to do with some other things, right, some, some mental issues that we were being
3:42
told about.
3:43
Now, my attitude about that situation changed completely on Tuesday.
3:49
So I started out being very concerned about her and the situation, but as the day wore
3:53
on, my attitude really, really did start to shift.
3:56
But before I get to all that, let's kind of go back to Sunday.
3:59
So Biles, you know, they're, they're doing all the kind of the team performance things.
4:03
But she's doing her four different events and Biles had an uncharacteristically off performance
4:08
in all four of the events, essentially.
4:10
Now specifically in the floor exercise, she flew off the floor, like way off the floor
4:15
during a tumbling pass.
4:16
And it was kind of funny because even the announcers were like, all she has to do is
4:19
keep her power under control.
4:21
But if she doesn't, you know, something crazy might happen.
4:23
And she flew super far off off the platform, like off the, off the floor, it was kind
4:26
of crazy.
4:27
And then also on the vault, she took an enormous step.
4:30
And on the second vault or the first of all, she almost kind of went off the platform a
4:34
little bit.
4:35
So it was like tons of power, but not a whole lot of control.
4:38
Okay.
4:39
But here's the thing that's crazy about it is even though she was clearly off, she still
4:43
scored higher than any other gymnast in each of those individual competitions.
4:48
She still scored higher than them, even though she made massive huge, huge, huge mistakes.
4:53
That was because her routines are so difficult.
4:55
She is doing things and has been doing things for years now and all kinds of competitions
4:59
that no one can even try because they would be too dangerous for them to try.
5:03
They're just not capable of doing that.
5:05
So that was probably the most impressive thing that came from Sunday is it's like, okay,
5:08
you know, things didn't work out really the way that she wanted, but she's still the
5:11
goat.
5:12
She's still the best.
5:13
But coming out of that, the United States actually qualified second behind the Russians,
5:16
which was not common or not really expected because the Americans are supposed to be finishing
5:20
first, right?
5:21
But then we fast forward to Tuesday morning and that's the breaking news and that the
5:24
initial reports is that there was a physical injury and it was going to keep vials from
5:27
competing in the team all around.
5:28
Now USA Gymnastics released a statement.
5:31
This was how the statement read said this quote, Simone has withdrawn from the team final
5:34
competition due to a medical issue.
5:37
She will be assessed daily to determine medical clearance or future competitions.
5:41
Unquote.
5:42
Okay.
5:43
And then the United States Gymnastics came out a little bit later and corrected the record
5:45
to say that she was not physically injured, but that it was more of a mental issue, which
5:50
created quite a bit of confusion because it's like, what do you mean?
5:54
Mental issue?
5:55
Like some sort of like malady or some sort of like actual diagnosable issue here.
5:59
Like, and we didn't really get a lot of information.
6:01
So going into the Olympics, again, the US, they were heavy favorites to win the gold.
6:06
Okay.
6:07
But on Tuesday, the 27th, so Tuesday of this week, the team finals went down and the US
6:11
women got silver behind Russia because they didn't have the greatest gymnasts on the planet
6:14
or some obeils, right?
6:16
So kind of a disappointment.
6:17
Again, you're never that disappointed to get an Olympic medal, but silver, man, there's
6:20
just something about silver that that means you were right there.
6:23
And I think that means the Russians, they took the, the men's all around team and they
6:27
took the women's all around team, which I can't remember the last time that happened.
6:30
But after her team competed without her gaining the silver medal, which again is nothing,
6:35
nothing to, you know, talk down about like that's a, that's a great thing.
6:39
Simone Biles did a press conference with the other gymnasts and she was up there on the
6:42
podium, which is interesting because she's having all these mental issues, but then she's
6:45
still had time to, you know, be there to watch the other competitors and to do this press
6:49
conference.
6:50
Um, she had some very interesting things to say.
6:53
Okay.
6:54
So I'm not going to play everything that she said, but I'm going to play you some clips
6:58
here.
6:59
But as we're playing these clips, as you're listening to this or watching this, we're
7:02
going to play a game called count the excuses.
7:05
Okay.
7:06
So here we go to Simone Biles again, after the team competition was over.
7:11
No injury.
7:12
Thankfully.
7:13
And that's why I took a step back because I didn't want to do something silly out there
7:17
and get injured.
7:18
I thought it was best if these girls took over and did the rest of the job, which they
7:21
absolutely did their Olympic silver medalists now, and they should be really proud of themselves
7:25
for how well they did last minute having to go in on.
7:30
And it's been really stressful, this Olympic games, I think just as a whole, I'm not having
7:34
an audience.
7:35
There are a lot of different variables going into it.
7:37
It's been a long week.
7:39
It's been a long Olympic process.
7:41
It's been a long year, um, so just a lot of different variables.
7:46
And I think we're just a little bit too stressed out, um, but we should be out here having
7:51
fun.
7:52
And sometimes that's not the case.
7:54
So if you're keeping track at home, so far we're up to didn't want to do something silly
7:58
and get injured.
7:59
It's been really stressful.
8:00
There was no audience.
8:02
It's been a long week.
8:03
It's been a long Olympic process, a long year, a lot of different variables, a little bit
8:08
too stressed out and should be having fun and they weren't.
8:12
So let's get back into some more of her comments here.
8:14
I just felt like it would be a little bit better to take a back seat, uh, work on my
8:20
mindfulness and I knew that the girls would do an absolutely great job and I didn't want
8:24
to risk the team a medal for, uh, kind of my screw-ups because they've worked way too
8:29
hard for that.
8:30
So I just decided that those girls need to go and into the rest of the competition.
8:35
So now we're adding to the list, wanted to work on her mindfulness, whatever mindfulness
8:39
is and didn't want to risk the team and metal because of her screw-ups, which is probably
8:44
the worst excuse of all, simply because even with her screwing up mightily, she still had
8:49
higher scores than any other gymnasts in the competition, but let's go and wrap up her
8:52
comments here.
8:53
Yeah.
8:54
I say, um, put mental health first because if you don't, then you're not going to enjoy
8:59
your sport and you're not going to succeed as much as you want to.
9:02
So it's okay sometimes to even sit out the big competitions to focus on yourself because
9:07
it shows how strong of a competitor and person that you really are rather than just battle
9:12
through it.
9:15
So to crescendo her list of excuses, it's one to put mental health first and went to focus
9:20
on herself.
9:21
So I just want to run down this list again because that that was only about a minute
9:24
and a half worth of clips, but she didn't want to do something silly and get injured.
9:27
It's been stressful, really stressful.
9:29
No audience, a long week, a long Olympic process, a long year, a lot of different variables,
9:33
a little bit too stressed out should be having fun, but weren't necessarily wanted to work
9:37
on her mindfulness, didn't want to risk the team a medal because of her screw-ups, which
9:40
is absolutely ridiculous and wanted to put her mental health first and wanted to focus
9:44
on herself.
9:45
Okay.
9:46
So, you know, have your opinions about that.
9:48
Don't worry.
9:49
We'll get into mine here in a little bit.
9:50
If you can't already tell where I'm going to be going with this, but a day later, okay.
9:52
So a day after this, the US gymnastics release, another statement, which led to even more
9:58
breaking news.
9:59
And it was this statement here, quote, after further medical evaluation, Simone Biles has
10:02
withdrawn from the final individual all around competition at the Tokyo Olympic Games in
10:06
order to focus on her mental health, unquote.
10:09
So they were very cagey early on about the reasons why she wasn't going to be there.
10:12
They called it a medical issue.
10:14
And now they're talking about her mental health.
10:17
So a lot of people were expecting her to still compete in the individual all around.
10:20
So she was getting, you know, rightfully so, a lot of crap for, you know, kind of leaving
10:23
the team out to dry, but then wanting to compete individually.
10:25
But as of right now, that that's not going to happen, like, you know, there is no intentions
10:29
whatsoever.
10:30
She has pulled out from the individual all around competition.
10:33
So the only thing left to see in this story really is if she competes in the individual
10:37
events, which I believe are next week, okay?
10:39
So I think technically she could still win four gold medals.
10:42
Like I don't really know what she's qualified for or how that all works, you know, and not
10:45
the, not the most enormous USA Gymnastics rule following fan.
10:49
So I don't really know.
10:50
But she can still win some gold medals, right?
10:52
Now, my prediction is that she won't compete in those events.
10:56
All right.
10:57
So she's already the greatest of all time, but considered to be by my most people, right?
11:02
The greatest of all time.
11:03
Right? Some people might say Nadia Cominici or even the Americans like, you know, Shannon
11:08
Miller and Gabby Douglas and Nastia Luke.
11:10
But even those women would probably point it at, you know, someone Biles and say, yeah,
11:14
she's probably the goat.
11:16
But now she doesn't have to be the goat.
11:18
She doesn't have to win more medals because now she can be a mental health hero.
11:22
So that's a little bit different.
11:24
But what would a few more gold medals actually do to her standing in terms of as in terms
11:28
of being like the greatest gymnast after ever, right?
11:30
She went into this Olympics and won four or five gold, she would have solidified her place,
11:34
but it's just, I don't really think that she would.
11:36
I hope she does.
11:38
Like for the American medal count sake, I hope that she does.
11:41
I don't hold in the ill will towards Simone Biles.
11:43
I hope that she competes and does really, really well.
11:45
I think that'd be great for the country and it'd be great for her in USA Gymnastics blah,
11:49
blah, the whole thing.
11:50
So the reaction to all of this almost universally, right, has been praise for Simone Biles, right?
11:57
So I mean, it didn't matter where you look from the blue check marks on Twitter to the
12:00
main new sources around the world.
12:03
Everybody is basically applauding this move by Simone Biles.
12:06
And the number one word that they're using to describe this situation and her actions
12:10
is brave, perhaps one of the most overly used words in modern parlance, brave.
12:20
She was brave for choosing not to compete.
12:24
Okay, now very, very few people have come out to even question or critique Biles.
12:29
Most people's critiques were pretty fair by the ones that I saw and most of these people
12:32
have just been absolutely raked over the coals for even possibly challenging the decision
12:37
that this person made.
12:38
But, but again, she is a public figure, right?
12:40
Like she's, she's not like a politician or something like that, but she's, she's not
12:44
you and I.
12:45
She's out there.
12:46
She has a, a public profile just like anyone that has a public profile.
12:49
People can have their opinions on the decisions that you make.
12:51
So I think that that's fair.
12:53
But again, almost 100% universal praise, at least, you know, in the media and on Twitter.
12:58
But now I want to get into my thoughts.
12:59
Well, I guess before I get specifically into my thoughts on this, because I do have many,
13:05
let's establish a few things here.
13:06
Okay.
13:07
Because I can already hear the people saying these things and I, they've said it to other
13:10
people.
13:11
So I know it's coming.
13:12
I have never nor am I now a gymnast, okay?
13:15
I have never been nor am I now an Olympian or an Olympic gymnast, like gymnastics person,
13:21
gymnast, right?
13:22
And those things, right?
13:24
I've never played a sport on television.
13:25
I played a lot of sports, but I've never played on television, okay?
13:28
I also have never nor am I now a professional athlete.
13:32
I've never been paid money to be an athlete, right?
13:35
And I can't even begin to imagine the pressure that professional athletes are under and even
13:42
more specifically Olympians that get to shine technically once every four years, right?
13:47
And in a big macro sense, I can, I cannot even begin to imagine the pressure that they're
13:51
under because I've never been in something even similar to that.
13:55
But that doesn't mean that I can't give my opinion on the goings on a professional athletes.
14:01
Like one of the silliest things that people can say like, Oh, how are you going to critique
14:04
LeBron James?
14:05
You've never hit a basket in the NBA finals.
14:07
Again, these are public figures.
14:09
We can make comments.
14:11
And just because you haven't played a sport doesn't mean that you can't, you know, have
14:14
an opinion on it.
14:15
I mean, look, the greatest NFL coach of all time, supposedly never even played a downer
14:18
football, right?
14:20
So there's a lot of things that we can go into here.
14:23
But again, I'm going to give you my opinions and you can have your opinions about my opinions,
14:27
but guess what?
14:28
We're all entitled to those.
14:29
So let's go ahead and get on to my thoughts here.
14:30
So my first thought on all this is that Simone Biles is the greatest gymnast of all time
14:34
and one of the greatest US Olympians of all time, right?
14:38
Full stop.
14:39
I mean, that that's there's nothing else I'm going to say to that.
14:42
She's a four time Olympic gold medalist, right?
14:44
She could get even more if she decides she wants to compete next week.
14:47
She has 19 world gold championship medals.
14:50
I mean, again, when you talk about the greatest ever in a sport, before the age of 25, I think
14:57
she's 24 years old, she's already considered by almost everybody to be the greatest ever
15:01
to play her sport.
15:02
Absolutely astonishing.
15:03
Okay.
15:04
Can't take that away from her.
15:05
Also, another thought, Simone Biles has a long track record of being mentally strong and
15:10
performing well because you can't get four Olympic gold medals and 19 world championship
15:16
gold medals and be a mental widget.
15:18
Like you can't do that.
15:20
It's not possible, right?
15:22
She's proven herself over and over and over again.
15:25
Okay.
15:26
But another thought I have with her is that if Simone Biles has a diagnosable mental disorder
15:33
or deficiency or handicap, I hope she gets treatment for that element and makes a full
15:38
recovery.
15:39
There's there's no sarcasm here.
15:42
There's nothing like that.
15:43
If she's having a real diagnosable mental disorder, I want her to get help.
15:50
Like I don't know if she has has a husband, I don't think she has a husband, like, but
15:53
I'm assuming she wants to get, you know, a husband and get married someday and all those
15:56
different things.
15:57
And for her sake and for the sake of her marriage and for the sake of her family, if
16:00
she does have a true issue, I want that to be figured out, but now let's transition just
16:04
a little bit.
16:05
Okay.
16:06
So here are some more thoughts.
16:07
We have no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Simone Biles actually has a mental disorder
16:14
deficiency or handicap, none whatsoever.
16:17
Although we have is what she said and what the USA Gymnastics organization is telling
16:23
us.
16:24
That's all that we have right now.
16:26
Again, as I established, she has a long track record of being incredibly mentally strong.
16:31
Right?
16:32
So this seems odd that the excuse being given right now is that there's a mental issue
16:37
going on.
16:38
So if it is a mental issue, it seems like it is not elevating to the idea of something
16:43
that could be actually diagnosed, something that could require some sort of medical intervention
16:49
or, you know, some sort of medicine to take care of this.
16:52
I don't really see that here.
16:54
Okay.
16:55
Another thing, another thought here is that it's very interesting that Biles's mental
16:59
issue was announced after she had a hard day of competition, you know, filled with less
17:05
than stellar performances.
17:07
The timing is at least interesting because we can only speculate here.
17:11
But if on Sunday, if she had done her four events and had been her normal Simone Biles,
17:15
greatest of all time self, I don't know that we're even having this discussion.
17:19
I don't know that this is even news because I'm assuming she would have competed on Tuesday.
17:22
And there's a really good chance the United States wins a gold medal as a team, right?
17:26
But these mental issues start after she basically had a bad day at the office.
17:30
Okay.
17:31
Another thing that I think is going to be pretty apparent here is that her sponsors will surely
17:36
pivot to pretending that Simone Biles is now some sort of a mental health hero because
17:41
they kind of have to because guys, you can't watch television or get on Twitter right now
17:45
and not see a Simone Biles advertisement.
17:48
And it's every time seemingly for a different company and a different product.
17:51
She is literally making millions and millions of millions of dollars this Olympic cycle off
17:56
of these sponsorships.
17:58
And so if you're one of these sponsors, you can't just basically write her off and be like,
18:02
Oh, great.
18:03
Well, she didn't, you know, she didn't perform the way that we wanted.
18:04
Let's go ahead and distance ourselves from here.
18:06
Nope, they're going to pivot now.
18:08
They're going to stand her up.
18:09
Not as this Olympic hero, but as this mental health hero, that seems pretty obvious at
18:13
this point.
18:14
Also another thought that I have here is that there is a clear difference.
18:19
And I know a lot of people don't like this argument, but I really, really do think it's
18:22
true.
18:23
There's a clear difference in how the public is reacting to Biles's decision because she
18:27
is a woman than if she were a man.
18:31
There's a big difference here.
18:33
Now I thought we were supposed to be fighting for equality and all things, right?
18:35
Even here recently, all of a sudden, you know, there's approval for women to enter the draft.
18:39
We're going to have, as United States, potentially someday have the women fighting our wars for
18:42
us.
18:43
That's going to be potentially great.
18:44
Yeah.
18:45
Great for our society.
18:46
But if this were a man that had done this, this person would be destroyed for this, absolutely
18:53
destroyed for this, which kind of leads into my next thought because it's the timing of
18:58
her quitting.
18:59
That's the problem.
19:00
Not necessarily just the act of her quitting.
19:03
It's the timing of it.
19:04
That is the real problem, okay, because what is so lost on so many people that are coming
19:09
to Simone Biles's defense is that she quit in the middle of the Olympics.
19:15
They're treating this like she quit before the Olympics, like after the US trials or before
19:20
the trials.
19:21
They're like comparing her to, you know, Michael Phillips, who said he did, he's not going
19:24
to do swimming anymore because he wants to take care of himself mentally.
19:27
He did that well after the Olympics was over.
19:30
She's doing this in the middle of the Olympic games.
19:33
So I know a lot of people have used examples like this, but I think it's important.
19:36
So I'm going to give you a bunch of them, just imagine Michael Jordan, game six against
19:40
Utah.
19:41
He has a bad first half and then at halftime, he says, Hey guys, you know, I'm going to
19:45
work on myself.
19:46
I'm going to work on myself.
19:47
I trust you all to go out there and have a good second half.
19:51
Imagine if Tom Brady, right as much as I hate to say, because I'm not a huge fan of his,
19:55
the greatest quarterback of all time, you know, he's, he's got the Buccaneers.
19:59
Let's say he's halftime and gets the Chiefs.
20:00
Let's say they're down.
20:01
He threw a couple of picks and you know, it's just bad news bears.
20:03
He says, you know what guys, I'm just not really having a lot of fun out there, right?
20:07
I think you can take care of the second half for me.
20:10
Imagine if Mariano Rivera, right, the greatest closer in the history of baseball, if he told
20:14
the Yankees, right?
20:15
And in one of their world series games, like, Hey, if you all want me to come out of the
20:18
pin today, I just don't think I can do that.
20:21
I just don't really think I can do that today.
20:22
I think I want to just kind of focus on me, right?
20:24
I want to do some introspective thinking.
20:27
Think about George St. Pierre in the middle of a round.
20:30
Let's not even say in between rounds if George St. Pierre had just kind of waved over at
20:33
the referee and been like, you know what, I'm just, I'm not really all there right now.
20:38
What if Wayne Gretzky during, you know, the Stanley Cup final were to just say, you know,
20:42
in between periods, not that this just really isn't for me anymore.
20:45
I think I need to do some, some thinking, you know, let's say you're a Formula One driver,
20:49
Michael Schumacher, you know, in the middle of a race, just kind of pulling over to the
20:51
side and getting out and just kind of setting your helmet down and be like, yeah, I don't
20:54
really think so.
20:57
Those people would be absolutely destroyed.
21:00
And the reason why I picked Jordan and Brady and Rivera and St. Pierre and Gretzky and
21:04
Schumacher is because these guys are, for the most part, considered consensus goats in their
21:09
respective sports, right?
21:12
But part of the reason why they are considered these goats is because of their mental fortitude
21:15
and their ability to per, you know, persevere, even when things aren't really going very
21:19
well, when they may not be that fun, when there's the chance that they might screw up
21:24
and it lead to their team losing.
21:26
I mean, and a lot of people brought this up and I agree.
21:29
And this was really highlighted highlighted in, in the, that Bulls documentary, the last,
21:34
the last dance, right?
21:35
So Scotty Pippen, this was the year when Michael Jordan wasn't on the team, Scotty Pippen wanted
21:39
to take the last shot in a game that the Bulls were playing.
21:41
But the coach drew the, drew the play up for Tony Ku Coach, right, drew it up for Tony
21:46
Ku Coach. And so because he, he didn't agree with that because Scotty Pippen wanted to
21:51
be the man.
21:52
He wanted to be the man to take that last shot.
21:54
He refused to come off the bench.
21:57
Phil Jackson drew up the pit play for Tony Ku Coach and Scotty Pippen just could not deal
22:01
with it.
22:02
He wouldn't come off the bench.
22:04
Now he gave a tear field apology to the team when they went back to the locker room right
22:08
after that game.
22:09
But here we are, I think like 30 or some 30 or so years later and people have still not
22:14
forgiven Scotty Pippen for that.
22:17
For a lot of people, they are defining his career as maybe one of the top 50 greatest
22:20
basketball players ever, right?
22:23
That's his defining moment of his career.
22:26
Most people can point to that moment.
22:27
They can't point to another moment where he bailed Michael Jordan out, right?
22:31
And a lot of that has to do with the fact that these are men and these men are expected
22:35
to overcome, but somehow Simone Biles is not expected to, which goes to my next point,
22:41
which is she has embraced the goat moniker, the greatest of all time moniker, but she
22:46
apparently couldn't live up to the goat pressure.
22:48
You know, she's worn on her, you know, whatever they're called like unitards or leotards or
22:53
whatever, her gymnastics costume, you know, she's had little diamond sequin things where
22:57
it's got a goat on there.
22:59
She's embracing the fact that she is the goat, which I'm okay with.
23:03
Because again, as I told you a little while ago, I believe that she is, but again, if you're
23:07
going to call yourself the goat, you can't do something like this and still be called
23:11
the goat to quit in the middle of your job.
23:15
Like again, she quit in the middle of the game, think of it as a game, right?
23:20
She quit in the middle.
23:21
So another thought I have here is that Simone Biles obviously acted selfishly, which is
23:26
potentially a good thing, but definitely a bad thing.
23:30
So let me tell you what I mean.
23:31
The potential good here is that she again, and I believe this, there's no sarcasm here.
23:36
She might have a mental disorder.
23:37
She might have an actual mental issue.
23:39
We don't know that.
23:40
You don't know that, right?
23:42
So it's potentially good that she decided to act selfishly here.
23:47
But what we know definitively, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that the bad thing here is
23:53
that she acted selfishly and she purposely let her teammates down, okay?
23:58
Because again, she's the leader of that team.
24:02
Nobody cared about anyone else on the team except for her, the person that came off the
24:05
bench essentially to take her spot was not nearly as good as her.
24:09
She basically ruined their chances, their dreams, their collective dreams of winning
24:13
an Olympic gold medal.
24:15
And she tried to play it off in her comments saying like, oh, you know, I thought that
24:18
they could potentially do better without me.
24:20
And you know, I just didn't want to potentially bring them down.
24:22
We've already established that her routines were so difficult that even if she screwed
24:25
up in all those routines, they still were going to be higher than anybody else's scores.
24:30
Okay?
24:31
So the fact that she acted selfishly directly affected a lot of people, namely the other
24:35
women she was going to be competing with, right?
24:38
And here's the other thing, which you guys kind of knew this was coming.
24:41
But if it hasn't happened already, by the time you hear this episode, it will.
24:45
All of those people, including me now, I guess, that are critical of Biles in any way will
24:50
be branded as a, wait for it, sexist and racist surprise.
24:55
I know that's like a shocking revelation that you could potentially be critical of somebody
24:59
that's not a white, Christian cisgendered, straight male.
25:02
But at the same time, she is a young lady who is a woman of color and you can't say that
25:08
those people ever do anything bad, right?
25:11
Because she's a woman and woman can't do anything wrong and people of color can't do anything
25:14
wrong either, right?
25:16
So I haven't seen anybody directly being called a sexist or a racist for being critical or
25:20
maybe questioning of the decisions that she's made, but that's obviously coming.
25:24
But I do want to kind of go into some larger issues here because, you know, let's leave
25:28
the world of gymnastics in the Olympics and all this stuff.
25:31
Let's leave the world of ESPN and NBC and all that.
25:33
Just leave that behind for now.
25:34
Let's talk about some bigger issues.
25:36
What is lost in all this craziness of this situation is the concept of responsibility.
25:43
I've not heard anybody talking about responsibility, okay?
25:47
Because when you have a job, it is your responsibility to do the job.
25:53
I know shocking, shocking stuff here.
25:55
I'm, I'm shattering the earth with this stuff, but not doing your job doesn't mean that it's
26:01
no longer your responsibility.
26:02
It's still your responsibility to do your job, okay?
26:06
There was Simone Biles's responsibility that if she was physically able to, that she would
26:13
compete for the United States as an Olympic gymnast and without being physically injured,
26:20
she abdicated that responsibility.
26:22
That is not completely insignificant, okay?
26:26
Because again, we're doing something interesting here with Simone Biles in this entire situation,
26:31
okay, we're elevating her job and her situation to, to a level that's beyond us way beyond
26:37
us because of the uniqueness of her job and her situation.
26:40
Again, most of us don't do our jobs on international television, right?
26:44
So she does have a unique situation that she's living in.
26:46
She does have a unique job.
26:47
She has a unique amount of sponsor.
26:48
She has a unique amount of eyeballs waiting on her to do her thing that she is maybe the
26:52
only person ever to be gifted enough to do the things that she's doing, right?
26:56
She is incredible, right?
26:58
But when we're elevating her to this position, we're making it seem like she's above her
27:01
approach, okay?
27:02
So I'm going to bring this back down to our level.
27:04
So just imagine wherever you're at.
27:05
So a lot of you guys are listening to this at work and we appreciate that, but make sure
27:09
you get your work done.
27:10
We don't need you guys getting fired.
27:11
But imagine using the same excuse at your job, okay?
27:16
So imagine that your job or the project that you're working on is really difficult and
27:20
it will be difficult to complete and you choose to just not complete it and you just tell
27:24
your boss that you weren't having any fun that you need to work on your own mental health,
27:30
that you need to focus on you right now.
27:34
How many bosses would be okay with that?
27:38
How many would be okay with that?
27:41
I mean, how many of those bosses would actually tell you, okay, great.
27:46
Guess what?
27:47
Today's your last day.
27:49
I would assume most of them because I've worked a lot of different places in my career
27:53
and I got to tell you, if I walked into my boss's office and just said, "Hey, I'm actively
27:57
making a decision not to do my job."
27:59
Well, guess what?
28:00
I have no reason to employ you anymore.
28:02
Now, I'm not sure that she can be fired from Team USA and I'm sure they're all crossing
28:06
their fingers that she does compete in the individual all-arounds because that'll be
28:09
good for them no matter what.
28:11
But that's not the individual all-arounds, excuse me, the individual competitions like
28:15
floor exercise, vault, you know, uneven bars, that kind of thing.
28:17
But just think about that for you.
28:20
Again, let's not elevate her to this crazy level.
28:24
She is at that level, but that's still her job.
28:27
It's okay to be critical if someone that's choosing not to do their job.
28:30
And I guess the next kind of larger issue I'm going to discuss here is that only in a
28:34
modern era, only in the modern era that we live in, can someone be applauded for being
28:40
a quitter and not an overcomer?
28:44
Just think about that because in its most basic sense of the word, she quit.
28:49
She tapped, she quit, okay?
28:53
And she's being universally praised for that, praised for it.
28:59
But I feel like as a people, call it Americans or as Westerners or whatever, we used to applaud
29:04
people that overcame their circumstances.
29:08
Part of the reason why you know why some people have lived such incredible lives is because
29:13
they overcame something, right?
29:15
So as you're reading an autobiography or watching a movie about someone's actual life,
29:20
it would be a really, really boring movie if it was just them quitting over and over
29:23
and over and never getting over the hump or doing the thing that they never thought that
29:27
they could do.
29:29
We love stories about the overcomer, but I feel like as a society, we're now accepting
29:33
these stories of quitters and victims, like that's the new normal, like that's the new
29:37
thing that we should be aspiring to.
29:40
I mean, okay, I'll leave that one there.
29:43
We'll actually go into this next point here.
29:44
I feel like we're in an age now where we celebrate mental fragility, but now we're hiding it
29:51
behind phrases like mental health because this was a very mentally fragile thing that
29:57
she did.
29:58
And again, I will remind you, I've never been in a position to experience that much pressure.
30:02
I don't know what that's like, but that doesn't mean that we can't still categorize that as
30:06
categorically fragile.
30:09
She did a very mentally fragile thing, okay?
30:11
But again, now we're calling it mental health, right?
30:15
So basically she's not physically injured, which we can prove.
30:19
We can see, you know, a broken leg.
30:21
We can see a busted up wrist like we can see those things.
30:24
But when you say, oh, it's her mental health, it's like, oh, well, you can't say anything
30:28
bad about her now because we can't like see inside her brain.
30:31
We can only read what she said or hear what she said, right?
30:35
But we're hiding that.
30:38
This is a mentally fragile person at this moment in her life.
30:42
Again with that long track record of not being mentally fragile, but now she is being mentally
30:46
fragile.
30:47
Why?
30:48
There's a reason there.
30:49
I don't think it's because she has a mental disorder.
30:52
Another issue that I'm seeing here is that this situation will only exacerbate the problem
30:56
of Americans feeling like it's okay to quit to feeling like they are fragile.
31:04
Like being a victim is not just a circumstance, but it's a preferable circumstance.
31:10
So there's a great book called The Coddling of the American Mind.
31:12
It's on our 100 books that every modern Christian man should read list and it really goes into
31:16
that.
31:17
It's really talking about it more in kind of an educational setting, but it's talking
31:19
about these things that we're doing that we think are good things, but we're actually
31:23
setting up the next generation for failure because we're allowing them to fail.
31:27
We're allowing them to pretend they're a victim when they're not because the shift of
31:32
narrative hasn't happened quite yet to where it's like, Oh, Simone Biles is the victim
31:35
here, but it's coming because a bunch of mean people, maybe Tucker Carlson and maybe some
31:40
other conservative commentators going to come out and, and you know, they're going to not
31:44
be super praised worthy of her and then all of a sudden, Oh, she's a victim now.
31:47
And again, I already told you these people are also going to be branded as racist and
31:51
sexist and those types of things, but this is not doing Simone Biles or any other person
31:56
paying attention to the situation, any good because there is a problem right now of people
32:01
feeling like it's okay to quit.
32:03
It's becoming a common American thing and it's never really been a common American thing.
32:07
We were the overcomers.
32:08
We were the ones that were going to fight for liberty and do all these things.
32:11
And now it's just like, we're so easy.
32:12
We're so easy to tap out, right?
32:14
Things get difficult.
32:15
We're going to let government be daddy and take care of us, right?
32:18
We don't need to overcome.
32:19
And that really kind of ends with my last point here, which is that mental resilience,
32:24
which we talk about all the time on this podcast, spiritual, mental and physical resilience,
32:27
mental resilience took a hit this week.
32:31
I want to read to you the final quote.
32:32
I played it earlier, but I want to read this quote to you from the end of that little press
32:35
conference because it's incredibly telling.
32:37
So here's the quote, quote, I say put mental health first because if you don't, then you're
32:42
not going to enjoy your sport and you're not going to succeed as much as you want to.
32:46
So it's okay sometimes to sit out the big competitions to focus on yourself because it
32:51
shows how strong of a competitor and person that you really are rather than just battle
32:57
through it.
32:59
So as she's like, you know, patting herself on the back for being such a strong person
33:04
and making this decision, it's that key at the very, very in those last six words rather
33:10
than just battle through it.
33:13
That's something that we used to value and it's not Simone Biles's fault that we don't
33:17
value this anymore.
33:18
This is just the latest iteration of the same issue, but we're teaching our children and
33:23
we're teaching ourselves as a culture that it's okay to quit.
33:26
It's okay to tap.
33:28
But that should just be a part of your life that we don't, we can just sit out the big
33:32
competitions.
33:33
You know what?
33:34
Because it's not going to be mentally very good for us.
33:35
It's not going to be very fun.
33:37
Like the, the Jocko willing, Cam Haines, you know, David Goggins mindset of just push through
33:42
no matter what endure.
33:45
That's a loss on us now.
33:47
That's why guys like Jocko and, and Cam and David, that's why those guys are famous because
33:52
they're doing things that most people are unwilling to do.
33:55
They're not willing to go to that dark place in their brain when they don't want to run
33:58
another step or do another round or whatever the situation is.
34:03
They don't want to do it.
34:04
They just want to tap.
34:05
They just want to quit and they do as Americans, we have gotten fat and happy.
34:10
And that is a problem for us.
34:12
There's a lot of people that think America, as we know it, you know, it's standing in
34:16
the world and all those different things.
34:17
It is inevitable that we will fall off, which we know there's not been a single people group
34:21
that has lasted for thousands and thousands of years in domination, whether it's the Greeks
34:25
or the Romans or whatever, eventually America's time will come and we will no longer be that
34:30
dominant force.
34:31
All those things are true, but this is part of the reason why it's going to happen.
34:37
Because hard times make strong men, strong men make good times.
34:41
Good times make weak men, weak men make hard times.
34:45
And there are a lot of weak people that are going to be doing things that is going to bring
34:49
about a very, very hard time for us as a people.
34:53
So is Simone Biles a hero?
34:56
No, not for this.
34:59
She might do some heroic things in her life and, you know, her story is not done.
35:03
And I have no ill will towards Simone Biles.
35:06
I want her to succeed.
35:07
I want her to win those gold medals next week.
35:09
I want her to come back four years or I guess it would be three years from now because they
35:12
took the year off or whatever.
35:13
I want her to come back and I want her to compete again.
35:15
I want her to win.
35:16
I want her to take care of these issues, right?
35:18
But she's not a hero for quitting, so which goes to the next question, which is Simone
35:23
Biles a quitter.
35:24
Yes.
35:25
Of course.
35:26
What did she do if not quit?
35:29
She clearly quit.
35:30
She said, I'm not going to do this in the middle of doing this.
35:34
That's quitting.
35:36
But maybe the most important question, which I didn't pose in the title of the podcast
35:39
is, is Simone Biles a villain because there are some people that are kind of villainizing
35:45
her decision.
35:46
And to that question, I would say, no, she's not a villain.
35:50
She is an adult.
35:52
She's an autonomous human being.
35:53
She made a call.
35:54
She made a decision.
35:55
Now, just because she made a decision doesn't mean that we can't have our opinions on it.
35:59
It doesn't mean that we can't express it, but no, she's not a hero.
36:04
Yes, she is a quitter, but no, she's not a villain.
36:06
Again, I hope she figures this out for her sake and for our country's sake.
36:10
All right.
36:11
Before we let you guys go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost.
36:13
That undaunted life, our mission is equipping men to push back darkness with content like
36:17
this podcast that helps you forge spiritual mental and physical resilience.
36:20
So the two links I got for you today.
36:21
One is the book list that I mentioned.
36:22
A lot of you guys know it, but if you don't know about it, it's the 100 books.
36:25
Every modern Christian man should read lists.
36:27
I got the link there for that.
36:28
And then also the book that I mentioned a little while ago, the coddling of the American mind,
36:32
how good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure.
36:36
Great.
36:37
When you got to check it out.
36:38
All right, guys.
36:39
Thanks so much for listening to this episode.
36:40
Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and review.
36:41
If you want to come speak at your live event or on your podcast, just shoot me an email
36:45
to info@undaunted.life.
36:47
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you can also check out our website for everything else, including how to donate.
36:55
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36:58
Just go to our website, www.undaunted.life.
37:01
We also want to thank the band, August Burns Red, for allowing us to use their music for
37:03
our content.
37:04
Dancer out to a track on this podcast is our song, cutting the ties, which is off their
37:08
10th anniversary, re-recording of their album, Leveler.
37:10
The links are in the description.
37:12
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
37:14
Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
37:21
Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
37:40
Bye!