More Girls Who Rocked the World

Simone Biles

1997– GYMNAST UNITED STATES

I’m not the next Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps. I’m the first Simone Biles.

—SIMONE BILES

Simone looked out across the room. To her left, kids walked gracefully across a balance beam. To her right, they jumped over some tall obstacle. What did they call it? She tried to remember. A vault?

Straight ahead, on the sea of blue mats, girls and boys were running and tumbling and doing crazy flips. Simone held her breath. She could do some of those flips too—she’d been practicing at home. She could even do a backflip off her mailbox.

“Do you want to try it?” someone asked, breaking Simone out of her trance. It was one of the teachers. “You can, if you want.”

Simone did want to try it. More than anything.

She spent another minute watching a group of older girls practicing their floor routine. She was pretty sure she could copy what they were doing. She nodded and stepped out onto the mats.

First, Simone did some cartwheels across the mat, and then a handstand into a forward roll. Next, she ran and leaped into the air, her legs snapping into the splits.

This is awesome!

Next, she did a handstand, dropping her legs behind her until she was in a backbend. When she popped out of the backbend, she raced across the mat a final time and then launched into a roundoff, finishing off with a back handspring—just like she’d practiced at home. When she was done, Simone froze and held her hands high in the air, as she’d seen the other girls do.

When Simone looked back at the teacher, she saw that several teachers and parents were gathered at the edge of the mats watching her. Some were clapping, but most just stood there with their mouths hanging open.

What? Did I do something wrong? Am I in trouble? she wondered.

The teacher approached her and asked, “Have you ever taken a gymnastics class before?”

“No,” answered the six-year-old.

The teacher scribbled something on a piece of paper and handed it to Simone.

“Give this to your mom when you get home, okay?”

Simone couldn’t read what it said, but that night, her mother told her the note was asking if they would sign up Simone for gymnastics classes.

“They say you’ve got some natural talent. I could have told them that,” said her mother, giving her a proud hug.1

Natural talent indeed! Just ten years later, Simone would surprise everyone by becoming the best gymnast in the world.

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Simone Biles was born in 1997 in Columbus, Ohio, into very difficult circumstances. Her biological father abandoned the family, and her biological mother struggled with drug and alcohol addiction. Simone and her three siblings were taken away from their biological mother because she couldn’t care for them, and they went into foster homes. When Simone was three, a social worker called Ron, her grandfather on her mother’s side, and told him the situation. Ron said, “Send them to me.”²

The situation was supposed to be temporary. Simone and her sister lived with Ron and his second wife, Nellie, for two years before being sent back to their mother. But Simone’s mother had not overcome her drug addiction. The social worker called Ron and told him that the children were being put up for adoption. Ron and Nellie were nearly retired and had already raised two grown sons. They had a big decision to make.

They chose to adopt five-year-old Simone and her three-year-old sister, while Simone’s great-aunt adopted her two brothers. On the very first day that the girls moved back in with their biological grandfather, Simone asked Nellie if she could call her “Mom.” Nellie and Ron have been Simone’s parents ever since. When an Olympic commentator repeatedly called them her “grandparents,” Simone responded, “My parents are my parents, and that’s it.”³

Simone grew into a restless, energetic girl, always running around the house, jumping, and flipping off furniture. Her mom was grateful when Simone discovered gymnastics at age six—it was a great focus for her endless energy. Within two years, Simone was already mastering the sport and began training with Aimee Boorman, who has been her coach ever since. Aimee knew Simone was special, but she had never coached an elite gymnast before. Just like Simone, Aimee didn’t let her lack of experience hold her back. Simone says, “I think that’s what helped us both, because we were both kind of clueless about it.”4

Simone and Aimee’s teamwork paid off, and in 2011, when Simone was fourteen, she began competing at the junior elite level. Her first major competition was the American Classic in Houston, where she did pretty well. She placed third all-around, first on vault and balance beam, eighth on uneven bars, and fourth on floor exercise. At the US Classic in Chicago later that year, she came in twentieth all-around. This wasn’t a terrible start to her career, but Simone knew she could do better.

The next year, Simone begged her parents to let her homeschool so she could have more time for training. She went from practicing gymnastics twenty hours to thirty-two hours a week.⁵ The difference was astounding. In national competitions that year, she began taking first place in all-around and got higher marks in all her other events. Her improved performances got her invited to the USA Gymnastics National Championships and eventually earned her a spot on the US Gymnastics Junior National Team.

In 2013, when Simone was sixteen, she began competing internationally on the junior national team. At her first big-time, elite competition, however, Simone struggled. The crowd was huge, and she was constantly distracted by the noise and yelling around the arena. “She couldn’t get focused,” said her mom.⁶ She fell several times, and her coach pulled her from the vault after she hurt her ankle during her floor-exercise routine. The stress of the higher-level competition really got to her, so her mom found a sport psychologist for Simone to talk to. It helped a lot.

At her next competition, the 2013 USA Gymnastics National Championships, Simone ignored the distractions, conquered her anxiety, and claimed her first world title. She was crowned national all-around champ and took silver in her four individual events. She hasn’t lost an all-around competition since. At that year’s world championships, she won gold in all-around and floor, plus a silver in vault and a bronze in balance beam.

That earned her a spot on the senior national team and the world championship team. At the 2014 World Championships in China, Simone completely dominated. She won gold in four competitions: team, balance beam, floor exercise, and all-around. She also took silver in vault. She became the first female gymnast to win three world all-around titles in a row, and the first African American gymnast to become the world all-around champion. Suddenly, Simone was in the spotlight at the top of the gymnastics world. Soon, she would become a household name.

Even in her teens, Simone is tiny—four foot eight inches tall, to be exact (the same height as your average fifth grader).9 But she’s also incredibly strong and unbelievably agile. She is known for her mastery of the floor routine. She is so good at it that her third pass (most gymnasts’ easiest move) is as difficult as her competitors’ first pass (their hardest). This means Simone starts with a move as hard as her competitor’s most difficult, and then she’ll do two more after that that are even harder! Simone is such a floor-routine goddess, she invented her own move that no one else can do, called “The Biles”: two backflips followed by a half twist in a straight body position. At the 2016 Olympics, The Biles brought down the house.

At the 2016 Olympic games in Rio, Simone was the star. She led the US team to victory over their closest competitor—Russia. The United States (and Simone) won a team gold medal, and Simone won three individual gold medals as well—in vault, floor exercise, and all-around—plus a bronze in balance beam. With her fourteen world championship medals, that brings Simone’s medal count up to nineteen, making her the most decorated female gymnast of all time. Team USA also chose Simone as the flag bearer for the closing ceremonies—and she was the first American female gymnast to win that honor.

As for the future, Simone plans to go to UCLA for college and is hoping to compete on Dancing with the Stars. She should certainly be back for the 2020 Olympics—she will only be twenty-three years old, after all. Simone once said, “Surround yourself with the dreamers, the doers, the believers and thinkers; but most of all, surround yourself with those who see greatness within you even when you don’t see it yourself.”10

Simone surrounded herself with people who believed in her and showed the world that having a rocky start in life doesn’t mean you can’t rock the world!

HOW WILL YOU ROCK THE WORLD?

I am going to rock the world by starting the first African American gymnastics company in my community before I turn twenty years old. To accomplish this, I will keep my grades up and learn how to run a strong business. I’m going to teach my students not only how to do backflips and front flips but also how to reach their goals, just like I will.

CARRINGTON TERRY images AGE 11