Mental health helpline supporting Team GB athletes as Simone Biles' struggles put focus on wellbeing

A 24-hour helpline for Team GB athletes is helping mitigate some of the Olympic pressures laid bare this week by Simone Biles.

The British Athletes Commission (BAC) runs the anonymous line from the UK as part of an increased mental health support service for medal hopes.

Strains on athletes became a major talking point in Tokyo earlier this week after Biles' "freak out" led to her pulling out of the team gymnastics. Michelle Obama, Michael Phelps and Britain's bronze-winning gymnasts rallied behind Biles as she later withdrew from the individual all-around event.

The star attraction of Tokyo 2020 appears increasingly unlikely to play any further part after USA Gymnastics confirmed "further medical evaluation" ruled she was unfit to compete in the all-around final. That announcement came 12 hours after Biles revealed "I just didn’t want to go on", having dramatically pulled out of the team event on Tuesday.

At a Games still in shock in Tokyo, there was a sense of relief in the Team GB camp that extra provisions had been made to look after athletes struggling with any mental health problems.

Paul Ford, the team's deputy chef de mission, had said prior to competition that the pandemic had brought the level of support into sharp focus.

"It’s been a challenging 15 months for everyone: staff as well as athletes," he said. He explained that "we've got 12 trained mental health champions across the team, across the preparation camp and the high-performance centre just outside the Olympic Village, just to be eyes and ears on the ground."

Having misjudged her opening vault, scoring the worst performance of her Olympics career of 13.766, Biles also told her trainer on Tuesday "I don’t want to do it – I am done".

USA Gymnastics said that Biles "will continue to be evaluated daily to determine whether or not to participate in next week's individual event finals". Jade Carey will replace her in the all-around final, the governing body added.

The Tokyo Games, in which Biles had been expected to shatter record books, have been the first since she spoke out in detail about the sexual abuse she faced from former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar.

She said on Tuesday that her personal turmoil means "doing what I love has been kind of taken away from me".

Obama, America's former First Lady, wrote online that "we are proud of you and we are rooting for you." The American swimming great Phelps, a 28-time Olympic medallist, also praised her honesty, having himself battled anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts.

"It broke my heart," told American broadcaster NBC. "But also, if you look at it, mental health, over the last 18 months, is something that people are talking about."

Sam Quek, the 2016 Olympic hockey medallist, attacked those that had subsequently trolled Biles online, adding that mental health should be taken as seriously as any physical injury.

Biles also shared a Tweet written by the Los Angeles fitness trainer Andrea Orris. She said: "It makes me so frustrated to see comments about Simone not being mentally tough enough or quitting on her team.

"We are talking about the same girl who was molested by her team doctor throughout her entire childhood and teenage years, and won the world all around championship title while passing a kidney stone, puts her body through an extra year of training through the pandemic, added so much difficulty to her routines, the judges literally do not know how to properly rate her skills because they are so ahead of her time."

Nassar was sentenced to up to 175 years in prison for sexually abusing women and girls as a doctor for USA Gymnastics and at Michigan State University after being accused of abusing more than 150 people, including Biles.

"I feel like I'm also not having as much fun and I know that this Olympic Games, I wanted it to be for myself," Biles had said on Tuesday. "I came into here and I felt like I was still doing it for other people, so that just hurts my heart."

The American star had hinted at problems prior to the team gymnastics final, writing on Instagram that she felt like she had "the weight of the world on my shoulders at times".

Explaining how British athletes are supported during what may be the most high-pressure fortnight of their lives, Ford had added: "Importantly, they are all people from inside the sport who know them well as individuals. You wouldn't want to put fresh faces who don't have a way of understanding working with a person in there.

"But also, they are outside of the sport as well because sometimes the easiest thing to do is turn to someone you don't know to talk openly about things. And we also have support personnel back in the UK to help with anything necessary."