In choosing her mental health over more gold medals, a superstar American gymnast is showing other athletes how much power they have to stand up to the athletic-industrial complex.

gymnast Simone Biles embraces teammate Jordan Chiles on July 27 after she exited the team final, explaining later that it was to 'prioritize mental health.'.

There are 11,000 athletes competing at the Tokyo Olympics and every single one of them knows whose name is up in lights.

Simone Biles is more than an Olympic gymnast.

Biles decided to make some changes to the schedule.

Biles’s decision to prioritize mental health, all the soldiers of America’s culture wars roused themselves from the couch to begin thumbing each other to death with sick burns.

Biles could just as easily have said she was prioritizing her life as she is her mental health.

Chiles and Biles make a celebratory gesture with silver medals around their necks.

A lot of corporations wanted in on the Simone Biles business.

She gets an opportunity to become even more famous and admired; the IOC gets to make all the money off the content thereby created however it turns out.

But if they want to make real money off the transaction, they’ll have to do that after the Games.

Biles said this: “It’s okay sometimes to even sit out the big competitions to focus on yourself, because it shows how strong a competitor and person you really are, rather than just battle through it.”.

What must the thousands of kids who are future Olympians make of that statement.

Biles isn’t just great, but something approaching an athletic demi-god.

Now she’s just told them: This, right here, the Olympics – this isn’t the measure of greatness.

It puts the Olympics on completely different footing with its … actually, what should we call the athletes in this context.

They volunteer to make someone else billions of dollars, in return for the chance to win a nice necklace, and then get a cool tattoo they pay for themselves.

Biles hasn’t just derailed the Tokyo Games.

She hasn’t just pushed mental health to the very top of the priority list of every for-profit league and athletic organization in the world.

Biles has just reminded her fellow athletes that the IOC isn’t the talent