AFP

American gymnastics superstar Simone Biles’s legacy may not be the four Olympic gold medals she won in her career but a remarkable meltdown at the Tokyo Olympics which sparked other sports greats to speak out about their battle with mental health issues.

Biles’s attack of the twisties — a condition meaning gymnasts lose the ability to orientate themselves in mid-air — is perhaps the most abiding image of the Games.

Since then, retired French football icon Thierry Henry and Irish rugby great Keith Earls have spoken frankly about their problems.

Biles’s travails followed Japan’s four-time Grand Slam winner Naomi Osaka who had admitted to her battles with depression in May last year.

Henry usually cut a very composed and assured figure on and off the pitch so his admission came out of the blue and a surprise to many. 

“To cry was impossible,” Henry told L’Equipe newspaper in March.

“You are not allowed to show your weaknesses.

“It was: ‘Thierry, do not cry, do not cry, do not cry!’

“I did cry when I was on my own, but I struggled with myself not to crack in public.

“Now I cry,” added the Arsenal legend.

Earls has accrued over 90 caps for Ireland and was a pivotal member of the 2018 Six Nations Grand Slam winning side.

He was diagnosed as bi-polar in 2013 after biting the bullet and going to see a psychiatrist.

The 34-year-old’s openness in his 2021 autobiography ‘Fight or Flight: My Life, My Choices’ was described as “inspiring” by his Ireland team-mate James Ryan.

“My admiration of him (Earls) has grown more, the way he’s able to normalise that, that it doesn’t matter who you are… Mental health doesn’t discriminate,” said Ryan.

Earls says that on the back of his revelations other team-mates have decided to go and see a psychiatrist.

This transparency seems to have broken the taboo where it was not seen as the done thing for sports people to go and see someone to discuss their mental health. 

“Twenty years ago it was the same thing regarding mentally preparing for events,” Greg Decamps, a researcher in sports psychology at Bordeaux University told AFP. 

“Nobody said ‘I am seeing a mental coach’.

“We are beginning to see the same thing in terms of consultations at sports psychology clinics.

“Because we cannot expect athletes to perform if there are unresolved psychological problems.” 

England’s men’s cricket Test captain Ben Stokes is another who has opened the door on mental health issues. 

The 31-year-old followed a long list of cricketers such as Marcus Trescothick, Sarah Taylor and Andrew Flintoff who have struggled with mental health when he admitted his problems last year, taking four months away from the game to manage his illness. 

“I was in a real dark place and having some difficult thoughts,” he said in May when he was elevated to the captaincy. 

“I now realise talking is such a powerful thing and it has completely changed me.”

– ‘There was suffering’ –

That is not to say in the unforgiving world of sport the floodgates have opened entirely over something that some still see as a stigma.

“Sport is a world that prides itself on excellence, strength, virility and where any sign of weakness is prohibited,” said Decamp. 

“Those who speak out will be regarded, often wrongly, as incapable of going to a national championships or to an Olympics.”

Decamp says teams still keep their lips sealed if the reason for a player or an athlete’s absence is due to mental health issues.

Some sporting bodies, though, have taken steps to address the issue.

In the United States the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) brought in in February this year “six months of paid mental health leave.”

This was welcomed by many players, including Cari Roccaro, who played a leading role in getting the NWSL to adopt such a policy after she suffered mental health issues.

“Girls who tear their ACL are still getting paid, even though they are away from the team for months,” said Roccaro in March.

“Why treat a mental injury any different?”   

Perhaps surprisingly success on the court or pitch does not protect you from the black dogs of depression.

According to Olivier Krumbholz, coach of France’s Olympic gold medal women’s handball winning team, mental health problems are more evident than ever before and “even more so when there are good results.”

He told AFP that following the team’s moment of glory in Tokyo “there was suffering.”

Ahead of Joe Biden’s first visit to Jerusalem as US president, Washington’s ambassador said his team will “pound tables” to press Israeli officials into making concessions to the Palestinians.

But ambassador Thomas Nides was talking about ensuring Palestinians have access to economic benefits such as 4G internet, not throwing American diplomatic muscle into reviving a peace process moribund since 2014.

Biden’s first Middle East tour since entering the White House last year begins in Israel on Wednesday, and he is expected to meet Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Friday in Bethlehem, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

US-Palestinian ties have improved under Biden, after hitting an all-time low under his predecessor Donald Trump, a staunch backer of the Israelis.

Along with the prospect of faster internet, the visit may also see the US restore funding to hospitals in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem, which have historically served Palestinians.

But some Palestinians said they are weary of US diplomacy which, they claim, emphasises economic benefits above core issues of the seven-decade conflict.

“It would be nice to have the 4G,” said Mohammed Mostafa, a former Palestinian Authority deputy prime minister and ex-chief executive of Paltel, the largest telecoms operator in the Palestinian territories.

“But it’s obviously not a substitute for solving the bigger issues like Jerusalem, like sovereignty or like freedom,” he told AFP.

“Israel thinks people will forget about the bigger picture,” he added.

– Hamas expects ‘nothing’ –

The 4G pledge, which ambassador Nides highlighted in an interview with the Times of Israel, would offer an immediate boost to Palestinian businesses, Mostafa said.

Palestinians are currently forced to either buy Israeli SIM cards or struggle with slower 3G connections.

“Israeli operators have a significant part of the Palestinian telecoms and broadband market,” Mostafa said. “This would be a chance to bring that back to Palestinian companies.”

But “the Israelis think ‘we’re going to give you 4G so you’ll keep quiet on the other things,” Mostafa added. “We are interested, but we also want bigger things.”

Until July 1, Israel was led by prime minister Naftali Bennett, a right-winger who opposed the Palestinians’ over-arching demand — the establishment of their own state.

Bennett embraced an approach known as “shrinking the conflict,” seeking to defuse tensions by improving economic opportunities in the West Bank and the blockaded Gaza Strip, which is controlled by the Islamist group Hamas. 

One such key policy was to increase permits for Palestinians, including from Gaza, to seek relatively lucrative work in Israel. 

Asked about the expectations from Biden’s visit, Hamas official Basem Naim said: “Nothing.”

Yair Lapid, Bennett’s replacement as Israeli premier and a centrist, supports a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict.

But he is only serving as a caretaker leader ahead of elections in November, and is therefore seen as having little space to launch bold peace initiatives.

When Lapid visited Paris last week, French President Emmanuel Macron said there was “no alternative to a resumption of political dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians.”

Senior Israeli officials have told AFP that Lapid was “open” to meeting Abbas, but not to launching a new peace initiative for the moment.

– ‘Throwing money at occupation’ –

In an opinion piece for the Washington Post at the weekend, Biden asserted that his administration has restored approximately $500 million in support for Palestinians, after Trump slashed funding. 

But while Israeli authorities have promised to raise a sea of flags to welcome Biden in Jerusalem, there are few signs of ceremonial anticipation across the West Bank.

For Sam Bahour, a prominent Palestinian-American businessman in the West Bank, apathy about Biden’s visit transcends the latest fluctuations in Israeli governance.

“The Biden administration has fallen into the Israeli trap –- that trap is fragmenting all of the Palestinian rights under international law, and then using them as playing cards as if they were giving concessions back to the Palestinians,” he said.

Backing Israeli initiatives in the West Bank is simply “throwing money at the occupation”. 

Bahour said Palestinians can manage with slower internet, but not without statehood.

“We don’t need 4G,” he said. “We need the fourth generation of Palestinians not to live under military occupation.”

From Indian K-pop idols to Swedish songwriters, South Korea’s music industry is now a hotbed of global talent — a smart strategy as it aims for world domination, experts say.

K-pop bands have long included non-Koreans: Blackpink’s Lisa is Thai, while Japan and China are both well represented, and Korean-American singers have topped the local charts.

But after megastars like Psy and BTS brought K-pop to a global audience, the South Korean entertainment agencies behind almost all the popular groups are recruiting further afield.

DR Music’s girl group Blackswan only has two Koreans in its six-woman line-up, and last month added the industry’s first Indian “idol”, who joins Brazilian and Senegalese members.

In the United States a Korean-American K-pop singer, AleXa, recently won NBC’s American Song Contest, the US version of Eurovision. Though she sang in English, her training in Seoul made her stand out.

Staff at NBC said they had “never worked with an artist who could find a camera on stage faster”, according to Angelina Foss, creative director at South Korea’s ZB Label.

By the end of filming, other contestants were asking AleXa for tips, Foss said, adding that it was “just part of the training”.

– ‘Next step’ –

With comprehensive training programmes covering everything from acting and etiquette to stunt coordination, K-pop artists make some Western pop stars look like they are not even trying.

Recruited in open castings or found through online audition tapes, South Korea’s entertainment agencies identify the raw talent and then get to work.

At ZB Label, part of industry powerhouse Zanybros which has produced thousands of K-pop music videos, the bosses are “always thinking — what’s the next step in K-pop”, Foss said.

They signed AleXa because they believe she has the “full package” and saw her potential as a young Korean-American to appeal to K-pop’s growing global fandom.

AleXa has studied dance since she was two but said the training regime was still gruelling.

“I trained every day of the week. I had dance classes every single day,” said AleXa, who also did years of competitive cheerleading while growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

“I had weekly evaluations, which is a very big thing in the K-pop industry,” she said, explaining that trainees perform for company staff to assess their progress.

After “months and months and months” of work, her bosses decided she was ready to “debut” as a fully fledged star.

In K-pop machinery the concept of an artist’s debut is very important, and obsessive detail is put into styling, staging and cinematography.

“Concept and execution are very, very critical,” said AleXa, whose songs are written in Sweden but produced in Seoul with a US audience but global YouTube views in mind.

– ‘Strive for perfection’ –

K-pop recruiters are fanning out across the world, with BTS’s agency Hybe hosting auditions in cities including London, Bangkok, Sydney and Tokyo, but at the same time global talent is flocking to South Korea.

Iyanu Anderson, 24, discovered K-pop as a teenager in Britain where she studied Korean at university before moving to Seoul, now working as a dancer, actress and model.

“I’d love to be trained,” said Anderson, who has appeared in a Samsung commercial with BTS and performed as a backing dancer at their three March concerts in Seoul.

“But to debut as an artist, I’m not sure,” she told AFP, citing the huge pressure, scrutiny and workload facing K-pop idols.

Even as a backup dancer “there is a certain amount of pressure, just because when we’re shooting a commercial, they strive for perfection”.

“Sometimes we’re shooting for hours and hours and one thing is out of line. And then it’s a whole new setup,” she said.

It is “quite difficult” for overseas performers to adapt to the hard-driving K-pop system, said Michelle Cho, assistant professor at the University of Toronto.

But the industry itself is being forced to adapt to draw top talent from across the globe, she added.

K-pop managers are “paying attention to pop cultural or youth cultural aesthetics and styles… in lots of different places”, Cho explained.

If they manage to successfully diversify casting and train new types of stars, “that can only be a good thing” for the industry and its global prospects, she said.

Apple’s quest to produce a viable self-driving car remains stalled despite years of work, with its team plagued by setbacks as rivals race ahead, The Information tech news website reported Monday.

Buzz surrounding a potential Apple car began some eight years ago with the vehicles being touted as the first new “big thing” from the company since its iconic co-founder Steve Jobs died in October 2011.

However, self-driving Apple cars have had trouble on streets near its Silicon Valley headquarters, bumping curbs, straying from lanes, and almost hitting a jogger legally crossing a road, The Information said, citing interviews with people who worked on the project.

The article maintained that team troubles resulted from ever-shifting goals and leadership, staff turnover, and lack of faith in the project by high-ranking Apple executives.

Apple chief Tim Cook early last year portrayed self-driving cars as an ideal match for the technology giant during an interview released by the New York Times.

“An autonomous car is a robot and so there are a lot of things you can do with autonomy; we will see what Apple does,” Cook told journalist Kara Swisher’s “Sway” podcast.

Cook hinted that an option could be for Apple to build an autonomous-driving technology platform used by automakers.

He expressed admiration for electric carmaker Tesla, which is among companies developing autonomous driving capabilities.

Apple first revealed its self-driving tech aspirations in 2016 and Cook has since then said he saw autonomous driving systems as a “core technology” for the future.

Apple acknowledged last year that it trimmed its team devoted to self-driving car technology but stressed that it’s still in the race.

Most major auto manufacturers and many technology groups are currently developing autonomous vehicles, considered to be the future of the automobile, along with electric power.

Less than a year ago, Waymo, the self-driving unit at Google’s parent company Alphabet, expanded its robotaxi service to riders in San Francisco in another step toward fully autonomous ride-hailing.

The company allows “trusted testers” to hail rides in self-driving cars with an “autonomous specialist” on board for backup.

The move expanded the Waymo ride-hailing program which has been operating in Phoenix, Arizona since 2017 as rivals work to launch similar operations.

Waymo has been moving ahead of most competitors and has raised billions of dollars in anticipation of a wider launch.