On her way to becoming a world champion, Biles faced tough decisions. In eighth grade, she was training 20 hours a week, far less than other elite gymnasts. If she wanted to be an Olympian, she would have to commit more time to training. For Biles, that meant shifting to homeschooling and taking on more practices. Traveling to competitions would be all business. A Texas Monthly story about Biles noted that when they travel “gymnasts are sequestered—they stay in a different hotel from the one in which their families stay—to reduce distractions. If they’re allowed out at all, it’s for carefully supervised visits to a tourist site or megamall.” Still, Biles decided to make the switch. Afterwards, as she told Buzzfeed, “My hours ramped up and we did beam and bars twice a day, which usually I had only done once a day.”
A few years later, she faced a similar choice when UCLA offered her a full athletic scholarship. To accept the scholarship and attend college with her peers, Biles would have to give up the opportunity for endorsement deals. The NCAA doesn’t allow student-athletes to make money off their names while they’re in college. Biles once again decided to stick to professional gymnastics. As a professional, she could earn money and continue to face the world’s top competition. Explaining her decision to Buzzfeed, Biles said, “I can always still go to college, but the window of opportunity of going professional is very [small] so I had to make a decision.”
The first black gymnasts to win any medals during an Olympics competition were Dominique Dawes and Betty Okino in 1992. No black athlete won an individual gold medal at an Olympic gymnastics event until Gabby Douglas in 2012. Douglas, Dawes, and Okino were all subjected to racially-charged criticisms. Since she became a national figure, Biles has had to deal with similar issues. After she won the world championships in 2013, an Italian participant named Carlotta Ferlitto responded with negative comments. She said, “next time we should paint our skin black, so we could win, too.” Instead of denouncing Ferlitto’s remarks, an Italian spokesperson added, “the current trend in gymnastics …is going toward a technique that opens up new chances to athletes of color, well known for power, while penalizing the elegance typical of Eastern Europeans.”
In October 2016, Biles appeared in a music video for the song “Overnight” with recording artist Jake Miller. In the video, Biles is portrayed as Miller’s girlfriend. This led to negative comments about interracial relationships (Miller is white). It also led to outright racism directed at Biles. In response, she tweeted, “everyone forgets that I have feelings.”
During the 2016 Olympics, Biles also faced intense media scrutiny about her family. She doesn’t have a relationship with her biological father, and only occasionally speaks to her biological mother. She was briefly in foster care as a toddler. At age 5, she was adopted by her grandparents, Ron and Nellie Biles, whom she refers to as her parents. She didn’t give her upbringing much thought until it became a topic of conversation at the Olympics. Biles told Buzzfeed that the interest in her family is “just kind of thrown at me and it’s weird to talk about.” Ultimately, she said in an interview with Us Weekly, “My parents are my parents, and that's it.”
Racism and gossip have taken an emotional toll on Biles. Gymnastics can be mentally challenging. Training with tough coaches like Martha Karolyi, who oversees the U.S. women’s team, makes it even tougher. According to Texas Monthly, Biles started working with a sports psychologist named Robert Andrews to help in that area. She was afraid that something was “wrong” with her if she needed to talk to Andrews. He did his best to convince her that wasn’t true, and that other top athletes also spoke to him about their anxieties. At first, not much changed. Biles hit a mental wall at the 2013 Secret U.S. Classic. It was her worst performance as a pro. As Buzzfeed describes it, “She fell from the uneven bars, bobbled on the beam, and almost fell off. Next came floor, typically her best piece, where she fell to her knees after a full-twisting double back somersault.” Biles’s longtime personal coach, Aimee Boorman, removed her from the rest of the competition for her own safety. “She could have done something that could’ve ended her career right then and there if I let her compete. I could tell that her mind wasn’t where it needed to be,” Boorman told Buzzfeed.
After that competition, Biles invested more time with Andrews. She also had some productive heart-to-hearts with Boorman and Karolyi. Her anxieties lessened. Now, she can often be seen laughing during events, while teammates and opponents are understandably more nervous. “I think I was just trying to live up to everyone’s expectations that I kind of got lost in competing. I was just so stressed. I didn’t know how to deal with a lot of it,” Biles told Buzzfeed in the lead-up to the 2016 Olympics.
Biles is an exceptional athlete. Yet, her commitment to honing that athleticism in the gym and her willingness to make tough choices are what truly set her apart. Along the way, she has gracefully leapt over many hurdles. She has confronted racism and bullying. She has learned to accept the mental challenges that come with competing on the world’s biggest stages. Few athletes have been able to stay so resolute.
Simone Biles isn’t done either. She plans to continue participating in domestic and international gymnastics events. She has even hinted at a desire to make another Olympics run at the 2020 games in Tokyo, when she’ll be 23. Regardless of whether she competes at the next Olympics, Simone Biles already exemplifies what it means to be an Olympic champion. In a sport where perfect-10 scores no longer exist, she’s as close as they come to the perfect gymnast.