PARIS — Manila Esposito, the bronze medalist on the balance beam, stared like a deer in the headlights in a packed post-meet press conference. As she started to speak, her voice barely audible, Simone Biles reached over and adjusted Esposito’s microphone, nodding at the Italian gymnast that she was good to go. Later, after the moderator posed a question to Alice D’Amato, Esposito’s teammate, it took D’Amato a moment to respond. The moderator started to prompt her, when Biles gently reminded the moderator that the translation into the earpieces takes a little time to process.

Every now and again there comes a reminder: Simone Biles is 27 years old. This is not her first rodeo. She knows a thing or two about microphones and translations, succeeding and even a little bit about failing. Biles started competing internationally more than a decade ago, as a braces-wearing 16-year-old. She wasn’t old enough to drive. She wasn’t old enough to drink when she went to Rio in 2016.

Now she’s married but, like a new bride who is asked when she wants to start a family upon exiting the ceremony, Biles has been asked, even before she finished competition in Paris, how she feels about Los Angeles. She initially answered with a nonanswer. It would be lovely to compete on her home turf, she admitted, but she also acknowledged that age is not merely a number. “I’m old,” she said with a laugh.

Later she expressed her exasperation on X. “You guys really gotta stop asking athletes what’s next after they win a medal at the Olympics,” she tweeted, adding, “Let us soak up the moment we’ve worked our whole lives for.”

It is the crux of it, really, but in Biles’ case, it’s messaging that needs to be flipped. It is everyone else that needs to do the appreciating, instead of greedily wondering if we might get to enjoy more. This is what happens, of course. We get spoiled, and then desperate, desperate to not let go of a thing we probably took for granted. Biles is a constant, a near-sure thing in sports. Neither age nor injury, abuse or mental health demons, have defeated her. She comes back every time, and so we are left to fret: What if this is it?

It very well could be. Her coach, Cecile Landi, is leaving to become the head coach at the University of Georgia. Her husband and Biles’ co-coach, Laurent, will follow in a year’s time after their daughter graduates from college. It seems like the ideal transition. She has nothing left to prove, but then again, that’s the tease. This stopped being about proving anything three years ago.

Then, done in by the twisties in Tokyo, Biles did the painful digging to excavate the root of her mental-health struggles. She admitted to abuse at the hands of Larry Nassar and courageously questioned USA Gymnastics’ role in it before the Senate Judiciary Committee. She questioned her own “why,” a scary proposition for all of us, confronting really what we want and what we’re all about. She then had the courage to admit she’d lost her direction, that she’d exchanged her love for gymnastics for answering a bell. More courageously, Biles went and fixed it, taking a year off from a sport in which time is already unforgiving.

“To do the work, the personal work to be here and to perform, it’s amazing,” Laurent Landi said. “It just shows how tough the mind is, and that if you heal it properly, you can be very, very successful.”

She is hardly fading. Biles spent the entire week here dealing with a nagging calf injury, originally injured before trials and tweaked here, during qualifications. Doctors wrapped her leg for the entirety of the competition, and while Biles downplayed the seriousness of it — “Y’all are nosy,” she jokingly chastised reporters when asked — Landi admitted it’s been a matter of managing the pain, not eliminating it. Medication, treatment, ice, the usual lineup, all to ensure that it “held up,” much different than healed. “It was bothering her, of course,” he said. “Was it impacting her performances? I don’t think so.”

Landi smirked then, as if to say, “You tell me.” Four medals, three of them gold, more than all but 22 countries competing in Paris to date.

The final day, of course, was meant to be a coronation, a victory lap and an au revoir. Instead it revealed Biles’ humanity. She was tired. She’s competed in four of the five days possible here. And she was mentally drained. The pursuit of righting the Tokyo ship weighed heavily on her. The event finals felt weird, too. Instead of playing music while the gymnasts performed, Bercy Arena turned into a church, complete with would-be church ladies tsk-tsking people who dared to react when the gymnasts nailed a skill on beam.

“We asked several times if we could have some music or background noise,” Biles said. “So I’m not really sure what happened there.”

These are not excuses; they are realities. The beam turned into the Hunger Games, medals awarded to those who didn’t fall off. Three women, including Sunisa Lee, fell before Biles and two others had serious balance checks. Yet when Biles missed a landing on her back layout step out and fell, the arena gasped. Later, after the competition ended and Biles officially failed to medal, a mom in line at the Bercy Arena concessions stand bemoaned to her young daughter, “I feel so bad for Simone.” Her daughter, eyes wide, replied, “She fell,” as if she’d just watched DaVinci paint outside of the lines or Beethoven miss a chord.

In her defense, the girl couldn’t have been any older than 8, and in her lifetime, Biles has been Olympic perfection. Until this beam final, Biles had competed in nine different Olympic events in her career, including team, all-around and event finals. She’d medaled in each and every one, earning gold in seven.

Then her very humanity had the audacity to strike again. Two hours after her beam foible, Biles returned for the floor exercise, an event she’s never lost in either the Olympics or worlds. She landed awkwardly during warmups, appearing to tweak that same calf injury. Tended to briefly, Biles nonetheless went out and landed her first tumbling pass, restoring order to the universe. But on the second and the fourth, Biles twice stepped out of bounds, costing her precious tenths of a point, just enough to slot her second to Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade.

It should be noted — she messed up two moves named after her, that no one else even tries. This is Biles’ definition of failure.

Her definition of success? If you ask Biles, it’s not in the medals, her power. It’s in the very thing that showed itself on the last day of competition: her realness. She is proud of what she’s accomplished, but she’s more proud of who she’s become and the people she believes — accurately — she’s helped.

“Putting your mental health first, and taking time for yourself, whether you’re in sports or not, it’s about longevity,” she said. “Longevity in sports, specifically, but also just for a better, healthier lifestyle.”

Not far from where Biles competed, a woman walked down a Parisian sidewalk, following behind her friendly Australian shetland sheepdog. Indulging dog lovers in need of a fix, she stopped to chat. She is French, but in Paris to enjoy the Olympics and upon learning her new dog friends were from the U.S. said immediately how much she enjoyed the “American gymnast.” She had watched Biles’ documentary on Netflix and commended her for opening the dialogue on mental health.

“I am not an athlete,” she said, adding that she was nonetheless grateful that Biles made it OK to “talk about” your personal struggles. “I appreciate that.”

If this is the end, we should all appreciate Simone Biles.

(Top photo of Simone Biles with her gold medal from the vault competition: Tom Weller / VOIGT / GettyImages)

Sixty metres into the men’s 100-metre Olympic final in Paris and Noah Lyles is third. He is three-hundredths of a second down on his compatriot Fred Kerley and Jamaica’s Kishane Thompson.

Yet — and this may sound bizarre — that is exactly where he needs to be.

Lyles has unmatched top-end speed. He wins as Usain Bolt used to, opening up his stride (to a ridiculous 2.5m) and eating up ground on others before cruising past. He holds form while they struggle and decelerate.

The headline is Lyles winning by five-thousandths of a second in the closest men’s 100m Olympic final ever — and the hardest for which to qualify. Lyles (9.78sec) ran the fastest time in an Olympic 100m final since Bolt’s Olympic record (9.63) in London back in 2012.

Over that final 40m, Lyles can close anyone. He did it in 2023 to win the World Championships and again in trials to reach Paris.

The final frontier for him to become Olympic champion was the start… so here’s the story of how a 75-year-old and a stickman helped give Lyles the edge.

“Your reaction times suck,” says Ralph Mann.

It is July 2023 and the former Olympian — he won 400m hurdles silver at the 1972 Munich Olympics — who holds a PhD in biomechanics, is helping coach Lyles on his block starts.

At Lyles’ training base in Clermont, Florida, Mann, now 75, has a marquee set up by the side of the track. There are a series of cameras pointed at the blocks and a laptop running software that is going to eke the final per cent out of Lyles’ starts.

Over the last 40 years, Mann has watched and collected data on more than 500 of the best athletes. “We know what it takes to be an elite starter,” he says. Mann has written a 300-page textbook on the mechanics of sprinting and hurdling. What he doesn’t know isn’t worth knowing.

Mann has applied that knowledge and decades of experience into a software, created in 1999, that generates a stickman that overlays the video of the sprinter in the blocks. Adjusted for body size and weight (to Lyles), it shows where the limbs should be as the sprinter sets and springs out the blocks. If you’ve ever played a Mario Kart ghost race, it’s that, just applied to sprinting.

They can go frame-by-frame to see how Lyles moves compared to the most effective/efficient method, and it becomes a coaching tool for the session with real-time feedback.

Lyles’ problems were that his hips were too far back when he set and his foot turnover was poor on the first few steps. Compared to the stickman, Lyles was not compact enough in the drive phase (as the athletes get up to speed), his feet were coming up too high between steps and his contact time (how long the feet are on the floor) was too long. The ankles weren’t rigid enough, either.

In short, there was plenty to improve.

It meant that steps four to seven, which are all about extending range after getting out with the first three, would come up short compared to better starters. Mann explains to Lyles that the only way he can get faster is by reducing the time between steps and keeping contact time minimal. White tape was put horizontally across the track to give Lyles a visual representation of where he should be landing at specific steps (three and seven).

Lyles knows how the model works. When he asks Mann what he has set it at, he replies, “What we need to make you famous.” Lyles speaks about doing what works according to the model, in terms of his form, rather than what feels good. He has fully bought in.

He is loud and, to some, borderline arrogant, but Lyles shows vulnerability with Mann.

“Let’s see your precious model beat me,” he says, imploring Mann to set the model at better than Lyles’ absolute best. “Let it run away, let me get embarrassed,” says Lyles. At one stage, Mann stands over Lyles in the blocks and physically moves his hips forward in the set position. Lyles, half-joking, half-serious, says he feels like he isn’t even in the blocks.

There were green shoots of this working in February.

After losing six previous times, Lyles finally beat Christian Coleman over 60m indoors. Coleman (6.34sec) is the world record holder, but Lyles edged him out by one hundredth to take the U.S. indoors title in 6.43. Coleman got out faster, quicker with his foot turnover and was first to reach his second step, but Lyles was in contention enough (sixth at halfway, 30m) to close hard and took it on the line — you’ll see a theme developing.

For a guy who could not break 6.5sec in 2023, it was huge. Coleman then beat Lyles at the World Indoors in Glasgow in March, but Lyles ran 6.47 in the semi-final and 6.44 in the final.

Fast forward to Paris.

Mann was right: Lyles’ reaction times do suck, by Olympic standards anyway. He was the joint-slowest to react in the final (178milliseconds, with Letsile Tebogo), 26th of 27 among semi-finalists (167ms) and 46 of the 70 men in the heats, who did not false start, reacted quicker (161ms).

That is one of the hardest parts to train. Nobody wants to false start in the Olympics and the 80,000-capacity Stade de France is loud. Lyles responding slower than others did not help, but it would not be the difference between gold and silver.

Lyles, in lane seven because he finished third in his semi-final, takes his second and third steps before Thompson in lane three. It shows great foot turnover given he was the last to get out.

His form and mechanics are good, even if he doesn’t accelerate as quickly through the drive phase as the Jamaican, or Tokyo 2020 100m champion Marcell Jacobs. Lyles was last up until 40m, but by 30m was moving at the same speed as Thompson.

The 60m split is the one that matters: 6.44. Lyles is suddenly third, having jumped four places from the 50m mark, going past Jacobs (lane nine), Akani Simbine (lane five), Tobogo and Oblique Seville. The latter two are outside and inside Lyles respectively.

8 frames, 1 iconic 100m final 🖼️#Paris2024 pic.twitter.com/0Q6ItW3e4j

— World Athletics (@WorldAthletics) August 4, 2024

“I was fortunate to have Seville next to me because, all throughout the year, he’s been hitting that acceleration that I wasn’t hitting,” said Lyles. “I wasn’t going to let him go.”

Though, as Mann once said: “Noah’s biggest competition is Noah.” His 60m split in the final was only one hundredth off what he managed at the U.S. Indoors. At the Paris Diamond League in June 2023, Lyles won in 9.97, going through 60m in 6.55. He saved one of his best starts ever for the final.

Thompson and Fred Kerley went through 60m in 6.41sec, but both had already well hit terminal velocity and were slowing. Lyles peaked slightly later than the pair and held form for longer, slower to decelerate.

Lyles’ extra stride length adds up. Across the full race, Lyles (44) took one fewer step than Thompson (45). The Jamaican might dwarf Lyles for arm or leg size, but strong arms can only pull an athlete to the line a certain amount. There is no replacement for good mechanics.

Lyles was in last at 40 meters, 7th at halfway…

His close & holding on to speed is amazing.

You can see the slight difference in the last two 10 meter splits. He ran .84 and .86 versus Thompson’s .85 and .87

What a race. What a close. pic.twitter.com/fpBAE06QJL

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— Steve Magness (@stevemagness) August 4, 2024

Lyles closed the last 40m in 3.35sec, the fastest in the race. Thompson closed in 3.38. Five others, barring Simbine who finished hard in fourth, covered the last 40m in 3.4sec or slower. “I wasn’t patient enough with my speed — I should have let it bring me to the line,” said Thompson.

In his book — it’s a textbook, really — Mann lists a series of athletes as the best in certain categories. There are the most talented, the most professional, most driven and best representatives of the sport, but he puts Lyles as one of his favourites.

After 100m gold in Paris, and a legitimate shot at doing the double with the 200m, Lyles ought to put Mann in his favourites too.

“Ralph Mann, before I left for Paris, said this is how close first and second is going to be away from each other,” said Lyles, bringing his index finger and thumb close together to gesture an inch. “I can’t believe how right he was.”

GO DEEPER

Noah Lyles’ mouth wrote the check. On the Olympics stage, his feet cashed it

(Top photo: Andy Cheung/Getty Images)

It was another day and another loss for the Chicago White Sox, but there was something extra special about Sunday’s defeat.

Sunday’s loss, a standard 13-7 defeat at the hands of the Minnesota Twins, marked their 20th in a row — a nice round number to give this franchise the national stage it deserves. No team had lost 20 in a row since the 1988 Baltimore Orioles, who lost 21 times in succession.

In Chicago, we’re used to the White Sox losing. It’s kind of their thing. But 20 in a row? We’re past the point of embarrassment here.

In Chicago, we’ve been laser-focused on the Sox being on track to break the 1962 Mets’ modern-day record of 120 losses, but now we’re at the point where they could surpass the 1961 Philadelphia Phillies’ record of 23 straight defeats.

Infamy, thy name is White Sox.

On NBC Sports Chicago’s beloved, painfully honest postgame show Sunday, host Chuck Garfien was rattling off some familiar insult statistics.

“Twentieth loss in a row, 40 games back, 1-12 against Minnesota,” he said. “I could go all day on this, 1-12 against Kansas City …”

That’s when Frank Thomas interrupted him. Thomas is, of course, the greatest player in franchise history and a semi-regular co-host on the show. As a hitter, Thomas was a stickler for details. On this show, too, he wanted it to be accurate.

“Sixty games under .500,” he said. “Under. Sixty games.”

That’s when Garfien realized his mistake. With the loss, the White Sox had dropped to 27-87. Talk about a Big Hurt.

“Sixty games,” he said. “I said they were 40 games under .500.”

With a little theatrical flourish, he slammed his stack of papers on the carpet.

“They’re 60 games under .500!” Garfien yelled, before settling back in his chair.

GO DEEPER

Chicago White Sox reach new level of futility, extend losing streak to 20 games

That’s when Ozzie Guillen, Garfien’s everyday co-host and the team’s World Series-winning manager, brought up the stat that I came up with recently: If you take out the Sox’s two franchise-record losing streaks, they still have the worst record in baseball.

See, it’s one thing to be the worst team in baseball in a singular season. Someone has to do it, after all. But add to that a 14-game losing streak and a 20-game (and counting) losing streak, and it makes them a contender for the worst baseball team in modern history. A laughingstock for the ages.

The ’62 Mets were an expansion team with a certain sense of whimsy. They had Marvelous Marv Throneberry and Casey Stengel. Jimmy Breslin’s book, “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?” was a classic, and seven years later, the Amazin’ Mets were world champs.

But the White Sox have been around since 1901. Their franchise record for losses is 106, which should be eclipsed before Labor Day. It’s been a long way down from the rebuild that was supposed to bring multiple championship parades to Chicago.

Two years after the Sox won 93 games and the AL Central, they hit what we thought was rock bottom. That was last year when they lost 101 games and Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf made the move none of us saw coming by firing his longtime front-office duo of Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn. Reinsdorf promised a quick turnaround behind new general manager Chris Getz. No one believed Jerry then because why would they? He has no trust left with the fans, not after all these years.

For some reason — OK, money — the team kept manager Pedro Grifol, whose managing record is currently 88-188. But he’s been a dead manager walking all season, and after the trade deadline passed, the focus quickly turned to his job status. It almost seems cruel that Getz and Reinsdorf haven’t fired Grifol yet. Maybe they’re waiting for him to win a game so he can go out on a high note.

“That means Pedro is 100 games under .500 since he got the job,” Guillen said. “Hoo, hoo boy.”

Ozzie is having an existential crisis on the Postgame Show right now pic.twitter.com/5eCUlirBgI

— White Sox Talk (@NBCSWhiteSox) August 4, 2024

Guillen, who led the Sox to their World Series victory in 2005, said he needs to see a psychologist because he’s been more angry and sad than usual lately. The reason?

“I don’t think I was that bad a manager, but they picked Pedro in front of me,” Guillen said to laughter on the show.

After Tony La Russa stepped down following health issues in 2022, Guillen was given a token interview for the open job, the one that he gave away in 2011. Guillen has wanted this job back for years, but the previous regime of Williams and Hahn didn’t want him back and they had no intention of hiring him two years ago. I agreed with them but only because the organization needs to move forward, not backward.

Guillen added: “I swear to God on this, when Rick Hahn called me and said I don’t have the job, he said, ‘We found the next Ozzie Guillen.’”

While Hahn was trying to compliment Grifol, Guillen, who went 678-617 (.524) in eight seasons, sure doesn’t appreciate the comparison now. But I bet he’s getting a kick out of how bad the Sox are without him.

A lot of fans want Guillen to immediately replace Grifol if and when the team fires him, but why would he want that headache? If I were any of the coaches on Grifol’s staff, I wouldn’t want to take the job, either. You don’t want to have to answer questions about this team, this season, twice a day.

Now, in what could be his waning days in the job, Grifol took some time to do what a lot of failed coaches and managers do in a Reinsdorf regime: kiss up to the boss.

“I’ve said this before and I’m going to say it again,” Grifol said according to the Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune. “This gets taken out of context and somehow it gets turned around over and over again, how people want to perceive it. Jerry’s a winner, OK? He’s an absolute winner. He’s a competitor. No, he’s not content. Who is?”

People have funny definitions of what makes someone a winner, especially when they work for a perennial loser.

The Bulls are under .500 since their actual, absolute winner, Michael Jordan, retired in 1998. The Sox have made the postseason just seven times in Reinsdorf’s 44 years of ownership. The 2005 playoffs were the only time they won a series, and 2020 and 2021 were the only years they reached the playoffs in back-to-back seasons.

But Grifol is speaking to an audience of one, even as he’s left dangling.

If the Sox get swept in Oakland this week, they could break the ’61 Phillies record at home Friday against the Cubs. The atmosphere will be somewhere between funereal and riotous.

I can’t imagine Grifol is on the top step for that one. How could you do that to him? How could you insult the fans’ intelligence by keeping him around?

It’s an awful situation for everyone, but this isn’t just on Grifol, though he’s certainly culpable for making a bad situation worse.

GO DEEPER

What we learned from this MLB trade deadline and the execs who drove the market

While he’s focused on building up the farm system, Getz tried to add some defense to last year’s slapdash fielding team to make the major-league product more palatable, but he failed in a very public fashion. The core hitters who are always hurt were, surprise, injured again early in the season (Yoán Moncada has played only 11 games and is in the team’s top 10 for bWAR), and the season fell off the rails with a 3-22 start. The starting pitching, at least, has been solid, and Getz and his staff have bolstered the organization’s pitching outlook.

That’s all part of the upside to losing: It allows a front office the runway to improve an organization, sometimes fairly quickly. That was the plan after the 2016 season, and it worked until it didn’t. But in his first trade deadline, Getz’s moves were widely panned, and new baseball rules are limiting the Sox to the 10th pick in next year’s draft.

Money is going to be an issue. The Sox are having another attendance decline, and their TV broadcasts, which were a highlight for the team, are now thought of as the worst in baseball. The team’s deal with NBC Sports Chicago is ending and a new RSN (in partnership with the Bulls and Blackhawks) will debut this fall.

It’s going to be a long road back to respectability. At least there’s still the TV pre- and postgame shows, which were as unfailingly honest and critical as ever Sunday. Those shows, the Campfire Milkshake and the pitching in the minors are the only things the organization has going for it.

The White Sox lose and lose and lose, and they’ve gotten so much practice, they now might be the best to ever do it.

(Photo of Nicky Lopez reacting to Sunday’s loss: David Berding / Getty Images)