It would certainly appear like there’s not much left to prove for Simone Biles. Her presumptive status as the greatest gymnast ever was conferred years before she’d racked up a record-shattering 37 medals between the Olympics and world championships. Since winning her first national title in 2013, she has won every all-around competition in every meet she has entered, often by stupefying margins. And yet here she is, continuing to toy with the outer limits of human potential while doing the hardest gymnastics of her life, the 27-year-old face of the US Olympic movement on the brink of still more history.
Two days after the shortest member of the US delegation floats down the Seine alongside her 591 teammates in Friday’s opening ceremony, Biles will take the Olympic stage for a third time when the gymnastics competition gets under way at the Bercy Arena with Sunday’s qualification for the team event. Three years after pulling out of multiple finals at the Tokyo Games amid a bout with the twisties, Biles is the hot favourite to recapture the all-around title – the sport’s ultimate prize – while becoming the first gymnast ever to win the event multiple times in non-consecutive Olympics.
“I knew I wasn’t done after the performances in Tokyo,” Biles said at last month’s US Olympic trials, where she won the all-around by an eye-popping 5.5 points. “Getting back in the gym and trusting the process with [coaches Cecile and Laurent Landi], I knew I’d be back.”
She added: “This is definitely our redemption tour. I feel like we all have more to give.”
Related: Simone Biles: Rising review – the greatest gymnast of all time sets the record straight
The 4ft 8in Biles is the bandleader of a star-studded US women’s gymnastics squad poised for a return to the world summit after settling for a disappointing team silver in 2021. Also back are the reigning Olympic all-around champion Sunisa Lee, Tokyo Olympic silver medalist Jordan Chiles and Tokyo floor exercise champion Jade Carey.
“Everybody probably looks at the team, like ‘OK, they went to Tokyo and this, this and this happened. And what are they going to do here in Paris?’” Biles said last month. “For us, I know we’re stronger than what we showed in Tokyo.”
But all eyes will be on Biles, whose only competition remains herself. It’s been some journey for the Texan, who was considered the most talented gymnast in history before she’d even competed in an Olympics. Born three months short of the age cutoff for London 2012, she’d already won three straight world all-around championships before her epochal Games in Rio in 2016, when she became a household name globally with four gold medals in seven days.
After taking a couple of years off to recharge then continuing to break records and push the sport to new heights on her return, Biles managed to extend her impact far beyond the competition floor. Once reluctant to speak out on thorny issues, she become a voice for change within USA Gymnastics after coming forward in 2018 as a survivor of sexual abuse by Larry Nassar, openly criticising the national governing body for its failure to protect its athletes. Her headline-grabbing tweets led to the closing of the Karolyi Ranch, the training centre where many of the gymnasts were abused, and played a role in the resignation of the USA Gymnastics president, Mary Bono.
Biles arrived for the Tokyo Olympics as the face of Team USA, hotly tapped for another week-long gold rush. But on the second day of competition, she abruptly withdrew from the team final after experiencing what gymnasts call “the twisties”, a disorienting condition that affects spatial awareness. She pulled out of several more event finals as the week progressed, a decision to prioritise her mental wellbeing that was met with both support and criticism, while underscoring the importance of mental health and sparking a broader conversation about the pressures faced by elite athletes.
That appeared to be the end of Biles’ gymnastics journey. That is until last June, when USA Gymnastics announced her name was on the entry list for the US Classic, a traditional tune-up event for the country’s national championships. Although Biles had left the door open for her return by never removing herself from the anti-doping pool after Tokyo, her comeback to the mat after a 732-day layoff still qualified as a major shock.
To no one’s surprise, she won. And won. And won again. All the time adding new and more difficult skills to her floor exercise, beam and vault routines and pushing the technical limits of the sport. Her latest is the Yurchenko double pike, a vault considered so dangerous that no other woman had even attempted it in competition. When she threw it down during qualification at last year’s worlds in Antwerp, it became the fifth element named for Biles in the women’s artistic gymnastics code of points. (The International Gymnastics Federation only names skills after gymnasts if they perform them at a major international competition, including World Cups, the world championships or the Olympics.)
Her journey to Paris was marked by a recommitment toward balancing her passion for gymnastics with her personal needs. Last year she got married to Jonathan Owens, who plays for the NFL’s Chicago Bears, and admitted to feeling the itch of motherhood when one of her former Olympic teammates recently gave birth. And yet she continues to drill away at the World Champions Centre, the 52,000 sq ft gym commissioned by her parents as a retirement venture shortly after her first world title. For what?
“I think with everything I’ve been through, I want to push the limits, I want to see how far I can go,” she said. “I want to see what I’m still capable of so once I step away from this sport, I can truly be happy with my career and say I gave it my all.”
Leave a Reply