Simply the best! Simone Biles is small in stature — just 4-foot-8 — but her reputation looms large.
The Texas-based athlete, now widely considered to be the greatest of all time in her sport, started taking gymnastics classes when she was 6 and earned an invitation to the junior national team camp when she was 14. Two years later, she made her debut at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, where she won a gold medal in the all-around and floor exercise competitions. She followed that up with two more all-around titles in Worlds ahead of her Olympics debut in Rio de Janeiro.
“People say I’m the best, but I still don’t think that,” Biles told The New Yorker before the 2016 competition. “I guess if I go to the Olympics and do well, maybe I’ll believe it.”
She did extremely well, winning gold medals in the individual all-around, vault and floor, a bronze medal in balance beam and a gold medal as part of the United States team alongside Gabby Douglas, Aly Raisman, Laurie Hernandez and Madison Kocian.
After the 2016 Olympics, the five-time world champion took a brief hiatus to work on a book and appear on Dancing With the Stars, but by August 2017, she was back in the gym.
The ESPY winner took home two more world titles and planned to retire after competing in the 2020 Olympic Games, which were postponed until 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“I kind of let myself go through the emotions,” she told Sports Illustrated in July 2021, recalling her feelings after realizing she’d have to wait another year to compete. “Sad, mad, angry, pissed off, hysterical — all of the phases. And that’s the first time in my life I’ve ever felt the emotions rather than somebody coming up to me and telling me, ‘Hey, it’s gonna be OK.’ I got to relish in all of those emotions and phases myself rather than people telling me, ‘Hey, it’s gonna be OK. You should be fine.’ It’s like, ‘Bro, no, I don’t want to be fine. I don’t have to be fine. I can be pissed off for now.'”
Biles was expected to dominate again at the Tokyo Games, but pulled out of the team competition after a disappointing performance in her signature event, the vault.
“Simone has withdrawn from the team final competition due to a medical issue,” USA Gymnastics told Us Weekly in a statement in July 2021. “She will be assessed daily to determine medical clearance for future competitions.”
Despite her withdrawal, the U.S. team — which also included Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles and Grace McCallum — still took home the silver medal.
“They stepped up when I couldn’t,” Biles wrote of her teammates in an Instagram post after their second-place finish. “Thanks for being there for me and having my back!”
Keep scrolling to take a look back at Biles’ many achievements over the years:
The gymnast absolutely dominated at her first World Artistic Gymnastics Championships appearance, taking home the gold in the all-around and the floor exercise, silver in the vault and bronze in the balance beam. She also became the first African American gymnast to win the all-around title and had her first move named after her — a double layout with a half twist in the floor exercise.
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Biles repeated her domination at the Worlds, winning gold in the all-around, balance beam and floor exercise and silver in the vault. The team's first-place finish brought her gold medal total to six, giving her the highest number of gold medals at Worlds for any American gymnast.
Rungroj Yongrit/EPA/Shutterstock
She became the first woman to win three consecutive all-around titles in history at the 2015 Worlds competition, where she also won gold for team, balance beam and floor exercise and bronze for vault. This brought her Worlds medal total to 14, the most for any American, and her gold medal total to 10, the most for any woman in World Championships history.
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Biles won her first Olympic gold medal as part of the U.S. team, then won three more in the individual all-around, vault and floor exercise. She also won bronze for balance beam.
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After Rio, she published an autobiography called Courage to Soar: A Body in Motion, A Life in Balance.
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Following in the footsteps of her teammate Hernandez, Biles competed on season 24 of DWTS and finished in fourth place with Sasha Farber as her partner.
ABC/Craig Sjodin
At the 25th annual ESPY Awards, the gymnast took home the trophy for Best Female Athlete, beating out Serena Williams, Katie Ledecky and Candace Parker.
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Biles released a statement confirming that former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar had sexually assaulted her. In December 2017, he was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison after pleading guilty to child pornography and evidence tampering charges. The following month, he was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in a Michigan state prison after pleading guilty to sexual assault of minors.
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At the 26th annual ESPY Awards, Biles was one of over 300 girls and women who received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award for speaking out against Nassar. Other recipients included Raisman, Douglas and McKayla Maroney.
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Following her year off, Biles returned to Worlds and won gold in team, all-around, floor exercise and vault. She had her second trick named after her for her vault routine — a roundoff, back handspring with half turn entry and front stretched somersault with two twists.
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In 2019, she won five gold medals at Worlds and became the record holder for most Worlds medals won by any gymnast in history. She also had two new skills named after her: the Biles II in floor exercise, a triple-twisting double-tucked salto backwards, and the Biles in balance beam, a double-twisting double-tucked salto backwards dismount.
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The gymnast started dating NFL player Jonathan Owens, who claimed he hadn't heard of her when they first met. "When I told her that, that’s one of the things she liked,” he told Texas Monthly.
Courtesy Jonathan Owens/Instagram
Biles helped the U.S. team earn silver in the team competition before withdrawing after her vault performance due to a medical issue. At the time of her exit, she had yet to confirm whether she would compete in the individual all-around, balance beam, vault and floor exercise.
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