Simone Biles Through the Years: From Junior Champ to Gymnastics GOAT

Simone Biles is small in stature — just 4-foot-8 — but her reputation looms large.

The Texas native started taking gymnastics classes at age 6 and earned an invite to the junior national team camp by 14. She had several world championship gold medals before she made her Olympics debut in Rio de Janeiro at age 19 in 2016. She scored her first Olympic gold medals in the individual all-around, vault and floor, a bronze medal in balance beam and a gold medal as part of Team USA.

 

After her triumphant run in Rio, Biles published her memoir and appeared on Dancing With the Stars, but she soon returned to the gym to prepare for the Tokyo Olympics. After pulling out of several Olympic events due to the “twisties,” Biles took a two-year break from competitions.

 

Following her April 2023 wedding to NFL star Jonathan Owens, she returned to the mat in August 2023 and secured her spot on Team USA for the 2024 Paris Olympics nearly one year later.

 

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.

October 2014
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.

October 2015
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.

 

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.

After Rio, she published an autobiography called Courage to Soar: A Body in Motion, A Life in Balance.

March 2017
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.

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.

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.

 

July 2018
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.

 

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.

October 2019
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.

August 2020
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.

July 2021
Biles helped the U.S. team earn silver in the team competition before withdrawing after her vault performance due to a medical issue. While she subsequently withdrew from the individual all-around, vault and floor exercise, she won a bronze medal in the balance beam competition.

“I just felt like it would be a little bit better to take a back seat, work on my mindfulness,” Biles said in a press conference after Team USA took home the silver medal. “And I knew that the girls would do an absolutely great job. And I didn’t want to risk the team a medal for kind of my screwups, because they’ve worked way too hard for that. So I just decided that those girls need to go and do the rest of our competition.”

December 2021
Biles earned Time magazine’s Athlete of the Year distinction following her mental health advocacy and emotional Senate testimony earlier that year.

February 2022
After less than two years of dating, Biles announced that she is engaged to Owens.

“THE EASIEST YES,” the Olympian captioned the sweet Instagram reveal in February 2022. “I can’t wait to spend forever & ever with you, you’re everything I dreamed of and more! let’s get married FIANCÉ 💍🥺🥲🤎 @jowens_3.”

March 2022
While reflecting on her career highs, Biles hinted that she may be willing to return to gymnastics in the future.

“Technically, if you would ask anybody in the U.S. that looks at an American gymnast, I’m probably already aged out, but I really feel like leading up to Tokyo, I was hitting my prime,” she explained to USA Today at the time. “Truly, I thought in 2016, at 19 years old, I had peaked. And whenever I came back to the sport, I was like, ‘There’s no way I’m going to get even better than I was because somebody told me that was the best I was going to get.'”

Biles added: “You just have to push out those negative views and just keep pushing. I want to see how much I’m capable of, how talented I can be. And that’s why I came back, just to not have any regrets if I look back in 10 years. So now I can really say I have no regrets, but maybe I might push it a little bit more to see.”

July 2022
Biles received the Presidential Medal of Freedom on July 7, which was presented by President Joe Biden.

“I’m so honored & thankful to be recognized as a recipient by President Biden for this prestigious award. I still have no words. I’m shocked,” she gushed via Instagram at the time.

April 2023
Biles married Owens after three years of dating. “I do,” she captioned wedding photos via Instagram at the time.

August 2023
Biles returned for her first competitions in two years. First, she won gold at the Core Hydration Classic in Chicago. Weeks later, she won gold at the Xfinity U.S. Gymnastics Championships, where she made history when she became the first gymnast to ever win eight national all-around titles. At age 26, she also became the oldest U.S. women’s all-around champion.

October 2023
Biles made history again at the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships in Antwerp, Belgium. She won her 27th and 28th world championship medals. Combined with her seven Olympic medals, she is the most decorated gymnast of all time.

Biles earned a spot on her third Olympic team after coming in first place at the 2024 Paris Olympic gymnastics trials, along with Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey and Hezly Rivera.

“This is definitely our redemption tour. I feel like we all have more to give,” she said in a press conference at the time, referring to the team’s silver medal win at the 2020 Tokyo Games.

July 2024
After Biles led the U.S. Olympics women’s gymnastics team to gold on July 30, she became the most decorated gymnast in U.S. history with eight Olympic medals, including five gold. She surpassed former Olympian Shannon Miller, who won seven Olympic medals.

Source Usmagazine.com