How Simone Biles Became the Greatest Gymnast of all Time
Investigative Feature
Since her gymnastics debut, Simone Biles has dominated the competition. She's won four Olympic gold medals, nineteen world championship medals, and had four gymnastic maneuvers named after her. She also hasn’t lost a major competition since 2013.
She's a 4-foot, 8-inch tall ball of energy and athleticism. She performs stunts that not only wow the audience, but her professional competitors as well. Former Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton has said Biles “may be the most talented gymnast I’ve ever seen in my life, and I don’t think she’s tapped into what she can really do.”
Biles discovered gymnastics when she was 6 years old and competed for the first time at the age of 7. "I went to Bannon's on a daycare field trip. While there, I imitated the other gymnasts, and Coach Ronnie noticed. The gym sent home a letter requesting that I join tumbling or gymnastics."
"Bannon's" is a gymnastics center in Spring, Tx, a suburb of Houston. It's the first place to notice Simone's talent and is where her gymnastics career began. Her coach, Aimee Boorman, describes an early encounter with grade-school-aged Biles:
She was sitting on the floor “with her legs out in front of her, and she puts her hands at her sides, and she pulls her legs up through a plank onto her stomach. At 6. That’s not normal. I was like, ‘Wow, this kid is something.’
Biles rose to fame in 2013 by winning two World Championship golds at the age of 16, including the all-around title. She followed that with four Worlds golds in 2014 and another four in 2015. She competed in the 2016 Rio Olympics where she won 4 gold medals and a bronze, setting a new American record for most gold medals in gymnastics at a single Olympics Games. She's the all-around Women’s Gymnastics favorite in the upcoming 2021 Olympics, and if she wins, it will only further solidify her seat as the greatest gymnast of all time.
But How Did She Get Here?
In this post, I'm going to break down a few things that Simone Biles has done throughout her life that have gotten her to where she is. I've read dozens of articles and countless interviews. I've gone over the accounts of her beginnings and believe I've spotted a few things she's done to push herself past her peers.
Yes, she is uniquely talented, and a lot of it comes naturally. Her physique and ability to generate an incredible amount of kinetic energy are genetic advantages. That being said, in a sport that judges every jump, twist, and landing to the decimal point, talent is necessary, but not sufficient.
Here are three things that helped make Simone Biles the greatest gymnast of all time.
#1: Make Hard Sacrifices
It's said that nothing easy is worth doing and that nothing worth doing is easy.
This may seem like an old and tired platitude, but it harbors wisdom for us all. It means that great things require sacrifice. In order to accomplish something noteworthy, difficult tradeoffs must be made, no matter the goal. Losing weight requires passing up on sweets. Getting stronger requires setting aside time for the gym and dealing with soreness. Sacrifice is a necessary condition for achieving success. You will never talk to a successful person, or read the biography of someone notable, and see that they never had to sacrifice.
Simon Biles is no exception. She made her first appearance in the junior national competition at the 2011 American Classic in Houston, placing third in the all-around and first in the vault. With this victory, Biles showed that she had the potential to compete at the highest levels, which presented her with a choice: Commit, or don't. For Biles, gymnastics was either going to be a hobby or a career.
Bile chose to commit. At age 14, she dropped out of public school to be homeschooled. She decided to sacrifice an ordinary childhood for an extraordinary future. Dropping out of school meant she would see her friends less often and miss out on the usual festivities like prom and homecoming. She chose a life in the gym over a life of fun with her peers. There is little time to socialize when you spend 6-8 hours a day training. Simone has said:
I was just so lonely all the time. I missed, like, all my friends at school and stuff. But I mean, in the end, it worked out. I decided that I wanted to be better. I didn’t just want to throw my skills, I wanted them to look good.
Not only has Biles sacrificed her time and her social life, but her body as well. In 2014, Biles fell victim to a shoulder injury that kept her from competing early on in the season. Remarkably, she recovered and went on to win the all-around at the 2014 U.S. Classic by a wide margin. She's competed with broken toes, kidney stones, and more.
It's well understood that professional gymnasts endure incredible amounts of wear and tear on their bodies. Gymnastics is a sport with lots of hard landings, twists, and jolts, and injuries can't be avoided. Most Olympic gymnasts peak in their teens and age out of the sport by the time they hit 20. Biles is now 24, making her domination of the sport all the more impressive.
Of course, modern science and sports medicine has come a long way in alleviating the physical consequences of gymnastics. But can you say you'd take up an activity you know will inevitably injure you and lead to major complications later in life? It is absolutely a sacrifice that Simone, and many athletes like her, have chosen to make.
#2: Push Through the Trials
Being human comes with obstacles, struggles, walls... whatever you want to call them. The stars don't always align and things don't always go our way.
Oftentimes, when someone reaches mass recognition, success, or achieves something extraordinary, our first thought is they had it easy, that it was handed to them. But nothing could be further from the truth for Simone Biles.
Biles wasn't born on third base. Far from it, she wasn't even born at bat. At a very young age, Simone lived through the dissolution of her family. Her parents struggled to simultaneously support 4 kids and drug and alcohol addictions. Eventually, Simone's father abandoned the family. Soon after, buckling under the pressures of single motherhood, Simone's mother was forced to give up her children. From then on, Simone bounced between foster homes until her grandparents adopted her at the age of 6, moving her to Spring, Tx.
Simone's early childhood was marred by instability. Her parents were undependable and the state bounced her around from foster home to foster home. No one but Simone can know for certain how impactful her early years were, but I think it's safe to say she was deprived of two of the most fundamental needs of any child: Stability and love.
Despite lacking that foundation, Biles persevered. She went from no family and no future, to making history. A shout-out has to go to her grandparents. They took her in, provided for her, and loved her. Simone's grandmother, Nellie, is not her biological grandmother, but that didn't stop her from treating Simone as a natural part of the family. She says she prayed to love her new daughters as much as she loved her boys:
I don’t know the exact date it happened, but my heart just made room.
Ron and Nellie Biles weren't overbearing, whip-cracking parents. They pushed her to do her absolute best, but more than anything, they equipped Simone to pursue her dreams. In ninth grade, Simone had to decide how high she wanted to go in the sport. To make it to an elite level, she’d have to be homeschooled. Her grandparents told her there would be no prom, no afterschool activities, and no hanging with classmates. They left the decision to Simone. After a tough week of consideration, she told them she would do it, she chose gymnastics.
This story shows they didn't force her into gymnastics, they simply laid out the reality of what it would take to reach the top.
Simone's drive to master her skills and "make them look good" came with unforeseen problems. In her early competition days, she suffered from self-confidence issues and performance anxiety. She was so hard on herself and would get so down after a bad performance that in 2013, Simone's grandfather called up Sports psychologist Robert Andrews for help.
At the time, Andrews considered himself retired. But after hearing the pleas from Mr. Biles, he decided to chip in:
When Ron called, Simone was having a really hard time, so I had no idea where she was going to go. Something clicked quickly, and I thought, 'Well, here we go again.'
Andrews has worked with a variety of professional athletes and is well known for his work with the Houston Texans. He says self-confidence is not something you are born with, it has to be learned. The way he describes self-confidence is not how you'd expect. He makes the problem seem like a trust issue:
Sometimes when great athletes struggle, they try even harder, which creates more struggle. They’re not trusting the talent they worked so hard to develop, and that creates more stress and frustration. She (Biles) was a snowball rolling downhill. I had to convince her to take her foot off the gas, and enjoy the game again. She was so stoic at meets. It didn’t look like she was having fun. Once she began interjecting that Simone-smile into her floor routine, the fans and judges started smiling, too.
Watching her perform today, you'd never guess that Simone has ever struggled with self-doubt and low confidence. She executes every move effortlessly as if she doesn't give any of it a second thought. But despite her assured demeanor, Biles has dealt with internal struggles that are common for many. She may seem invincible, but that's only because she's pushed through the trials. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?
#3: Take Big Risks
What does every successful entrepreneur, famous comedian, or world leader have in common? They take risks. This is another necessary factor in achieving success. Nobody can reach greatness without taking chances and pushing the boundaries.
Of course, it doesn't always pay off. But that doesn't mean it was the wrong thing to do. Life is often a game of process of elimination. We try things out, and when something doesn't work, we cross it off the list and continue on with the next experiment. Failure simply gets you one step closer to the right answer.
Simone Biles has one of the highest risk tolerances of any gymnast to ever live. It's evidenced in the fact that she attempts moves in competition never before tried by any other female gymnast and that she has 4 moves named after her, one in the vault, one in the balance beam, and two in the floor exercise. The vault move bearing her name has a difficulty score of 6.4, tying it for first as the most difficult Women's Gymnastics vault move.
Below she attempts the ultra-dangerous Yurchenko double pike. It's an extremely difficult move involving two backflips into a pike position. It's hazardous enough that few male gymnasts dare to try it.
The judges awarded her a measly 6.6 for the move, a score most consider far too low. There is a long and nuanced controversy behind that score. Basically, judges want to discourage competitors from trying moves they deem too risky. Biles is more than capable of completing the move, but with the current scoring system, she’ll never be properly recognized for it. Which begs the question; Why would Simone do the move if she knew it would be undervalued?
It’s because she’s making a statement. It’s a risky statement, but it’s something she believes will push her even further past her peers. Biles knows that she is leagues better than her closest competitors. And in order to get full recognition in the form of points, the scoring system needs to change. Performing the Yurchenco Double Pike was ultimately an act of defiance. She’s saying “you don’t want me to do these moves? You won’t acknowledge how difficult they are? I’m going to do them anyway.”
It’s the only way we’ll ever be able to measure how talented she truly is. She has to risk lower scores now, for higher scores later.
Conclusion
There you have it… three things Simone Biles has done to become the greatest gymnast of all time. They’re things you can do in your own life, no matter what you’re pursuing. We can’t all be great gymnasts, but if you apply the lessons from Simone’s life to your own, you can be great in your own way.