Lots of people learned a new phrase this week: the "twisties," which is what gymnasts call the mental and physical anomaly Simone Biles experienced during her vault at the women's team final at the Tokyo Olympics. The star of Team USA meant to do 2.5 turns in midair but only did 1.5 and landed with a big correction. To the untrained eye, it looked like she messed up. But Biles had suddenly lost the ability to sense where she was while hurdling through the air. As many gymnasts have pointed out, she's lucky she managed to land on her feet.
When you're flying through the air that fast, there's not much margin for error. You're mostly relying on muscle memory from years of training to make sure moves unfold like they're meant to. When Biles launched herself off the vaulting table and started spinning, her brain suddenly felt disconnected from her body. She wasn't able to use her limbs to control her tumbling and didn't know where she'd land. "I had no idea where I was in the air," she later said. "I could have hurt myself." Stills of Biles in midair from that terrifying vault show her looking discombobulated.
