Superstars Deepika Padukone, Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan, and more from the Bollywood fraternity have heaped praise on one of the most decorated American gymnast Simone Biles after she withdrew herself from Thursday’s all-around competition to focus on her mental well-being.
Deepika Padukone, who herself has been quite vocal about her battle with depression, took to her Instagram handle to give a shout-out to Simone. Sharing the athlete’s news screenshot by a news outlet, she wrote, “I hear you…” by adding hashtags: “#mentalhealth”, ‘#mentalhealthmatters”.
Dear Zindagi actor Alia Bhatt also took to her Insta story and praised Simone for the courageous step. She reposted Olympics’ post about Simone Biles’ withdrawal from the Tokyo Olympics and amplified Biles’ voice. Bhatt penned, “A reminder that your mental health is as important as your physical health. This helps change the narrative regarding mental health all over the world, more power to you,” with a praising hands emoticon.
The Badlapur actor, Varun Dhawan also shared the news on his Instagram and called Simone Biles an ‘inspiration’. He reposted Tokyo 2020’s post about Biles and penned a heartfelt caption. He wrote, “What an inspiration. An important reminder to take care of your mental health along with physical! A message for difficult times like these” with a string of motivating emoticons.
Furthermore, American gymnast Simone Biles revealed her mental health concerns as her reason to withdraw from the women’s team final in the ongoing Tokyo Olympics. The 2016’s Rio gold-medal-winner did not want to put her “health and well-being” in danger. Biles said, “Whenever you get in a high-stress situation, you kind of freak out. I have to focus on my mental health and not jeopardise my health and well-being”.
Breaking into tears in a press conference, Biles added, “It just s**ks when you’re fighting with your own head”. She revealed that her team wanted her to carry on with the competition and compete but she did not want to put a medal at risk. Bile said, “I was like: I think the girls need to do the rest of the competition without me. They were like ‘I promise you’ll be fine, we watched you warm-up’. But I said ‘no, I know I am going to be fine but I can’t risk a medal for the team and I need to call it”.
