NIWOT — Over the course of her short high school gymnastics career, Broomfield sophomore Audrina Zanella suffered the same mental block that once plagued the undisputed queen of the sport, Simone Biles, during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Those weird COVID Games saw Biles ultimately drop out of the competition due to the stress it caused, but throughout this past summer, Zanella was determined to not let it hold her back. A 2024 article from the Cleveland Clinic defined the “twisties” as “a brain-body disconnect that causes gymnasts to lose their sense of space on flips.”
“During offseason practices, I would come in and it was just me and one other girl on my team,” Zanella explained. “I would just stay and work twisting for the whole practice. I wouldn’t even go to any other events. I finally learned that I was going the wrong way for the last three years, so I twisted the other way and then got it within two days and put it on the floor.”…