TOKYO: Britain's most-decorated female Olympian Charlotte Dujardin has spoken of her sympathy for struggling US gymnast Simone Biles following her own battle with mental health problems earlier in her career.
The 36-year-old dressage rider took her Olympic medals tally to six in three Games with two bronze medals in Tokyo.
That moved her one ahead of retired British rower Katherine Grainger -- though track cyclist Laura Kenny could equal or even surpass Dujardin in Japan.
Dujardin felt immense pressure after securing double gold at the 2012 London Olympics, laying bare her struggles in her 2018 autobiography "The Girl on the Dancing Horse".
"Depression was not something I'd ever really understood," she wrote, saying she wanted to "hurt herself because she felt such pain".
She said she punished herself by not eating, losing nearly two stone (13 kilograms) in weight.
Dujardin suffered her traumatic episodes after the London Games but Biles's struggles were evident to the watching world during the gymnastics competition in Tokyo.
She stood down during the women's team final last week, struggling with the "twisties", a potentially dangerous condition meaning gymnasts lose the ability to orientate themselves in mid-air.
The US star, 24, subsequently pulled out of a series of individual events, only returning for the beam final on Tuesday, in which she took bronze.
- 'No turning back' -
Dujardin, who had to battle back from a fractured skull in 2009, said she could sympathise with Biles, who won four Olympic golds at the 2016 Rio Games.
"It is hard being successful," she told AFP by phone from the stables she shares with mentor Carl Hester in southwest England.
"It is a hard place to be with the pressure and the expectation. Those are quite hard things to have on your shoulders all the time."
Dujardin has faced further challenges, including breaking up after a 13-year relationship with her fiance Dean Golding two years ago.
"I have to say having the right people around you supporting you gets you through," she said. "You just have to make sure you never get to the point of no turning back.
"I am talking about ending your career, not anything else, and that you feel you cannot do it any more. But with the right people it can help to prevent that."
Since returning home, Dujardin has been celebrating with friends and family who were unable to support her in Tokyo because visitors are barred from attending due to coronavirus restrictions.
The rider, who also won a gold in Rio, is still getting used to her new position as the most-decorated British female Olympian, at least for now.
"It was a wow moment," she said. "I cannot quite believe it. It is hard to really quantify what I achieved.
"I did not realise it until the media kept asking 'what does it feel like' and I went 'oh my God!' -- that with the second bronze I had beaten someone as legendary as Katherine Grainger's record was unreal and you get such a thrill out of it."
GOAT, 'twisties' and beaming bronze: Biles's Olympics in five moments
Simone Biles wound up her challenging Olympic Games on the third rung of the beam podium on Tuesday. Here AFP assesses her time in Tokyo in five moments:
- The face of Tokyo 2020 -
Biles arrived in Japan as one of the poster girls of the pandemic-postponed 2020 Games, on a five-gold hunt to equal Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina's career record of nine.
With 32 Olympic and world championship medals (23 of them gold) to her name -- that's one medal for every one-and-a-half inches of her diminutive, 4ft 8in (1.4.22m) frame -- she is widely recognised as the G.O.A.T. And she is so at ease with being identified as the greatest of all time that she now wears a leotard decorated with silver rhinestones in the shape of the said animal's head.
She says by embracing it she hopes to inspire children not to be shy of success. And the status received affirmation from an unlikely source in the run-up to the Games when she became the first athlete to have her very own emoji courtesy of Twitter.
- The shock withdrawal -
Despite a stumbling qualifying performance Biles made it into all six finals, in contrast to Rio 2016 where she missed out on the uneven bars.
But then her Olympic Games were turned upside down with her shock withdrawal after baulking in mid-flight on her first vault Amanar in the team's final last week.
Her record-breaking dream was in tatters.
- The twisties -
Few outside gymnastics' centre of gravity would have come across "the twisties" before the condition, likened to the yips in golf, was thrust into the spotlight by Biles.
While a golfer suffering from the phenomenon risks missing a putt, a gymnast risks breaking their neck, the disconnect between brain and body with the consequent loss of spatial awareness a truly terrifying mid-air crisis when somersaulting backwards at high velocity off the vault.
"It's honestly petrifying trying to do a skill but not having your mind (and) body in sync," Biles told her 6.5 million followers on Instagram. Her plight received enormous support including from former US First Lady Michelle Obama and swimming legend Michael Phelps.
- The brave return -
As each of the finals she had won in Rio approached, so did the statement from US Gymnastics: "Simone Biles has withdrawn...." as daily medical assessments found she was not ready to return to her day job.
She took on the role of cheerleader-in-chief, shouting on her teammates from the wrong side of the fence.
"Every time I watch the guys and the girls out there, I wanna puke. Every time I watch them do a double double because I cannot fathom how they're doing it," she said.
Then, Monday, the inclusion of her name in the start list for the closing event, the beam, set pulses racing.
- Beaming bronze -
"Guess who's back?" tweeted the Olympics' official Twitter site on Tuesday morning, accompanied by the image of a g.o.a.t. Could this gymnastic artist possibly paint a gold-tinted ending to one of her darkest hours as an athlete?
With her American teammates joyously celebrating her arrival at an expectant field of battle, a pensive Biles had everyone holding their breath as she hopped up onto the 10cm wide beam.
The triple world champion on the apparatus put in a watered-down version of her usual heroics with a double pike dismount deployed for the first time since she was 12, so as to avoid any possible unfortunate mishap.
She earned a decent 14.000 to claim bronze to repeat her podium position from Rio.
Biles may be leaving without the sought-after gold rush but she feels proud at having put athlete's mental issues centre stage.
"To bring the topic of conversation on mental health to life means the world to me because people have to realize at the end of the day, we're humans, we're not just entertainment," she said feelingly on Tuesday.