Simone Biles withdraws from Tokyo Olympics 2020; Alia Bhatt and other actors heap praise

Recently, gymnast Simone Biles withdrew herself from Thursday's all-around competition at the Tokyo Olympics 2020, in order to focus on her mental well-being. As the news was confirmed by the media outlets, Bollywood actors such as Alia Bhatt, Deepika Padukone, Varun Dhawan and others have praised the most decorated American gymnast using their official social media handles. 

Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan, Deepika Padukone praise Simone Biles

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. 

Padmavat star Deepika Padukone, who has been vocal about her battle with depression, gave a shout-out to Biles on her official Instagram handle. She shared a screengrab of the athlete's news by a news outlet, the actor wrote, "I hear you...". She also added hashtags such as '#mentalhealth', and '#mentalhealthmatters' and tagged her mental health foundation, Live Love Laugh. 

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". 

According to Olympics, even though Simone Biles withdrew from the team final, she is still eligible for the upcoming individual all-around and apparatus finals. The individual all-around is held for Thursday while the apparatus is set for August 1-3. Last week, Biles had become the first Olympic athlete to have her own customised hashtag emoji on the micro-blogging site, Twitter. 

IMAGE: AP/ PTI