IIt certainly seems like there’s not much left to prove for Simone Biles. Her supposed status as the greatest gymnast ever was bestowed upon her years before she had collected a record-breaking 37 medals between the Olympics and world championships. Since winning her first national title in 2013, she has won every all-around event in every competition she’s competed in, often by astonishing margins. And yet here she is, continuing to toy with the outer limits of human potential while performing the most difficult gymnastics routines of her life, the 27-year-old face of the American Olympic movement on the verge of even more history.
Are you ready for it?
Two days after the smallest member of the U.S. delegation sailed down the Seine River with her 591 teammates in Friday’s opening ceremony, Biles will take to the Olympic stage for the third time when gymnastics competition gets underway at the Bercy Arena with team qualifying on Sunday. Three years after she withdrew from multiple Tokyo finals due to a battle with the turns, Biles is the odds-on favorite to regain the all-around title — the sport’s ultimate prize — and the first gymnast ever to win the event multiple times in nonconsecutive Olympics.
“I knew I wasn’t ready after my performance in Tokyo,” Biles said last month at the U.S. Olympic Trials, where she won the all-around with a stunning 5.5 points. “Going back into the gym and trusting the process with [coaches Cecile and Laurent Landi]I knew I would come back.”
She added: “This is definitely our redemption tour. I feel like we all have more to give.”
The 1.43-meter Biles is the leader of a star-studded U.S. women’s gymnastics team poised to return to the world’s elite after settling for a disappointing team silver in 2021. Also returning are reigning Olympic all-around champion Sunisa Lee, Tokyo Olympic silver medalist Jordan Chiles and Tokyo floor champion Jade Carey.
“Everybody’s probably looking at the team, like, ‘Okay, they went to Tokyo and this, this, 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 quite a journey for the Texan, who was considered the most talented gymnast in history before she even competed at the Olympics. Born three months shy of the age limit for London 2012, she had won three consecutive world all-around championships before her groundbreaking Games in Rio in 2016, when she became a global household name with four gold medals in seven days.
After taking a few years off to recharge and then continuing to break records and take the sport to new heights, Biles’s impact extended far beyond the competition floor. Initially hesitant to speak out on thorny issues, she became a voice for change within USA Gymnastics after coming forward as a survivor of sexual abuse at the hands of Larry Nassar in 2018, publicly criticizing the national governing body for failing to protect its athletes. Her high-profile tweets led to the closure of the Karolyi Ranch, the training facility where many of the gymnasts were abused, and played a role in the resignation of USA Gymnastics President Mary Bono.
Biles arrived for the Tokyo Olympics as the face of Team USA, hot on the heels of another weeklong gold rush. But on the second day of competition, she abruptly withdrew from the team finals after developing what gymnasts call “the twisties,” a disorienting condition that affects spatial awareness. She withdrew from several more event finals as the week progressed, a decision to prioritize her mental well-being that was met with both support and criticism while highlighting the importance of mental health and sparking a broader conversation about the pressures that elite athletes face.
That seemed to be the end of Biles’ gymnastics career. Until USA Gymnastics announced last June that her name had been added to the roster for the U.S. Classic, a traditional warm-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 return to the mat after a 732-day absence was still a major shock.
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It was no surprise to anyone that she won. And won. And won again. She continued to add new and more difficult skills to her floor routines, beam and vault routines, pushing the technical boundaries of the sport. Her latest is the Yurchenko double pikea jump that was considered so dangerous that no other woman had ever attempted it in competition. When she threw it down during qualifying at the World Championships in Antwerp last year, it became the fifth element named after Biles in the Code of Points for Women’s Artistic Gymnastics. (The International Gymnastics Federation names skills only after gymnasts who perform them at a major international competition, such as the World Cup, the World Championships, or the Olympic Games.)
Her trip to Paris was marked by a renewed commitment to balancing her passion for gymnastics with her personal needs. Last year, she married 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 work hard at the World Champions Centre, the 52,000-square-foot gym her parents built as a retirement project shortly after her first world title. For what?
“I think with everything I’ve been through, I want to push the boundaries, I want to see how far I can go,” she said. “I want to see what I can still do so that when I step away from this sport, I can be really happy with my career and say I gave it my all.”