50 Fun Facts About Simone Biles

Simone Biles grew up in Texas, but where was she born?

Columbus, Ohio, was her first home: she and her three siblings went into foster care as small children, and she has since become an advocate for children in the foster system.

Who owns World Champions Centre, the Texas gym that became Simone Biles's training base in 2014?

Her family built it: her mother suggested they open a gym of their own, Biles began training there in 2014, and its grand opening followed two years later.

Which gymnast is the only woman with more Olympic medals than Biles?

Biles is tied with Čáslavská for second on the all-time list.

What nickname was given to the gold-medal-winning 2016 US Olympic team that Biles led?

The Final Five picked the name themselves, for two reasons: Rio was national team coordinator Márta Károlyi's last Olympics, and the last Games before women's teams were cut from five gymnasts to four.

What did Biles call the condition that made her withdraw from most of the Tokyo 2020 competition?

The twisties made her lose track of her body in mid-air: on her vault in the team final she meant to do two and a half twists and came out after only one and a half.

After Biles withdrew mid-final in Tokyo, how did her three US teammates finish?

With silver, behind the Russian team: Biles had performed one vault before pulling out, and a week later she came back for one last final and won a bronze that she said meant more than all her golds.

Whose six World all-around titles did Biles match in 2023?

Kōhei Uchimura won his six at six straight championships from 2009 to 2015, while Biles needed a decade for hers, 2013 to 2023, with two long breaks from the sport in between.

In 2018 Biles won every event at the US Championships, the first woman to do so since which gymnast in 1994?

Dominique Dawes took the all-around and all four apparatus titles in 1994, beating her great rival Shannon Miller each time; Biles repeated her own clean sweep at the 2024 championships.

In 2023 Biles broke Alfred Jochim's 90-year-old record for the most what?

US all-around titles: Jochim won his seventh in 1933, and Biles's eighth came in her first season back after two years away from the sport, when at 26 she was also the oldest woman to win it.

Biles's fourth Laureus Sportswoman of the Year award, in 2025, tied which tennis player's record?

Serena Williams had stood alone on four since 2018. Biles joined her after walking away from the sport for two years, and Laureus had marked her return with its Comeback of the Year award in 2024.

Who adopted Simone Biles and her younger sister Adria after their time in foster care?

Her maternal grandfather and his wife, Ron and Nellie Biles, took in the two youngest of four siblings; Nellie, his second wife, is no blood relation to the girls she raised as her daughters.

Biles holds citizenship of which Central American country through her adoptive mother?

Belize is the home country of her adoptive mother, Nellie, and Biles calls it her second home: when its tourism board invited her Rio team for a holiday, she replied, 'you betta Belize we're coming'.

In which Houston suburb did Biles grow up?

Spring stayed her base: the World Champions Centre gym, where she trained from 2014, stands in the same suburb, so she prepared for three Olympics a short drive from where she grew up.

How did Biles first try gymnastics at age six?

On a day-care field trip she began copying the other gymnasts she saw there, and the gym sent a letter home inviting her to join its classes.

Who was Biles's longtime first coach, from age eight through the Rio Olympics?

Aimee Boorman was named head coach of the whole US women's team for Rio; after those Games she moved to Florida, which is why Biles's comeback began under a new coach.

Which university did Biles commit to before turning professional in 2015?

UCLA never got her: a year after committing she signed with an agent and gave up her college eligibility, saying the chance to make her Olympic dream come true was right in front of her.

Why did Biles leave public school for home schooling as a teenager?

To train more hours a week: the gamble paid off, for in 2013, her first senior season, she became both US and world all-around champion.

In which city did Biles, aged 16, win her first world all-around title in 2013?

Antwerp saw her become the first Black woman to win the world all-around title, and ten years later the same city hosted the championships where she won her sixth.

After a poor 2013 US Classic, whom did Biles consult, crediting them with launching her dominance?

A sports psychologist taught her to trust her talent and enjoy competing: at that meet she had fallen repeatedly and skipped her vault, yet three months later she was world champion.

At the 2015 Worlds in Glasgow, Biles became the first woman to do what?

Win three consecutive all-around titles: no woman had done it before, and with two more event wins that week she reached ten world golds, more than any woman in the history of the championships.

Which teammate took all-around silver behind Biles at the Rio Olympics?

Aly Raisman had tied for third in the London final four years earlier and lost the bronze on a tie-break, so Rio finally gave her an all-around medal, 2.1 points behind Biles.

What honour did Biles receive at the Rio closing ceremony?

Carrying the US flag was her fellow Americans' tribute to the Games she had just had: Team USA chose her after she won four golds and a bronze, the first female gymnast it had ever picked.

After Russian hackers leaked her medical records in 2016, Biles revealed she takes medication for what?

ADHD was no secret to the anti-doping authorities, who had granted her an exemption; she answered the leak herself, saying she had taken the medicine since she was a child and had always followed the rules.

What is the title of Biles's autobiography, which Lifetime turned into a biopic in 2018?

Courage to Soar was written with the journalist Michelle Burford in the months after Rio, and within two years it was a television film, with the newcomer Jeanté Godlock playing Biles.

Biles finished fourth on which TV contest in 2017?

Dancing with the Stars, which her teammate Laurie Hernandez had won a season earlier, sent her home in the semi-final on the viewers' vote, on a night when the judges gave both of her dances perfect scores.

What sent Biles to an emergency room the night before qualifying at the 2018 Worlds in Doha?

A kidney stone, which she nicknamed the Doha Pearl: appendicitis was feared at first, anti-doping rules ruled out strong painkillers, and she still qualified in first place the next day.

Which honour did Biles and the other survivors of Larry Nassar receive at the 2018 ESPYs?

The Arthur Ashe Courage Award went to the survivors as a group, and Biles kept speaking for them: three years later she told a Senate hearing that an entire system had enabled the abuse.

Whose all-time record for World Championship medals did Biles break in 2019?

Vitaly Scherbo, who once won six golds at a single Olympics, had 23 world medals; Biles tied him one day in Stuttgart and passed him the next, and by 2023 she had pushed the record to 30.

What is the Biles II on floor exercise?

A triple-twisting double tuck, three twists inside two somersaults, took her name because she was the first to land it at a World Championships; the 'II' marks it as her second named skill on floor.

What vault did Biles become the first woman to complete, at the 2021 US Classic?

The Yurchenko double pike had until then been a vault only men performed; when she landed it again at the 2023 World Championships, it was entered in the rulebook under her name.

Which streaming service released Simone Biles Rising, the 2024 documentary series about her return to the Olympics?

Netflix put the series out on 17 July 2024, days before the Paris Games it shows her preparing for, so viewers heard her own account of Tokyo just before they watched the comeback.

On which apparatus had Biles never lost her air awareness before Tokyo?

Uneven bars and balance beam had always been safe ground, she told her followers: the problem 'strictly likes floor and vault', which is why losing her bearings on every event that week alarmed her so much.

For what was Biles chiefly praised when Time named her among its 100 most influential people in 2021?

Championing mental health was the phrase in the tribute Time printed with her entry, written by a fellow champion who said Biles's greatest work was what she did outside the gym.

What distinction did Biles hold when she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2022?

Youngest person ever to receive it, at 25: the White House citation named not only her medals but her advocacy for athletes' safety, for children in foster care and for survivors of sexual assault.

Who took silver behind Biles in the 2023 world all-around final?

Rebeca Andrade became her great rival: the Brazilian was runner-up to her again in the Paris all-around, then became the first gymnast to beat Biles in a major international floor final.

What cost Biles the Paris floor gold by just 0.033 points?

Landing out of bounds twice cost her six tenths, some eighteen times the margin she lost by, and it was the first time anyone had beaten her in a major international floor final.

Who was the defending Olympic all-around champion Biles beat at Paris 2024?

Sunisa Lee had won the title in Tokyo after Biles pulled out of that final; in Paris the two shared the podium, Biles back on top and Lee taking bronze.

Which vault did Biles pair with her own Biles II to win the Paris 2024 vault final?

A Cheng is the one vault she used for both of her Olympic titles: beside an Amanar in Rio, and eight years later beside the vault that carries her own name.

Which was the only Paris 2024 final that Simone Biles left without a medal?

The beam final: she fell midway through her routine and had to hop down onto the mat, finishing fifth, but she still left Paris with a medal from each of her other four finals.

Which apparatus was Biles missing a named skill on when she submitted a new element before the Paris Games?

Uneven bars stayed the one apparatus with no 'Biles' in the rulebook after Paris: she filed a Weiler kip with a turn and a half, but never attempted it in competition there.

Biles turned professional in 2015 with Octagon, the agency of which Olympic swimmer?

Michael Phelps's agency took her on at 18, and the price was college gymnastics: turning professional ended her eligibility a year after she had committed to a university team.

Which future US Navy aircraft carrier were Biles and the swimmer Katie Ledecky chosen to sponsor in 2016?

USS Enterprise had not been started when they were named: the two Olympians later signed the 35-ton steel plate whose cutting marked the beginning of its construction.

How did Biles meet her husband, NFL safety Jonathan Owens?

Through the dating app Raya, in 2020, and she made the first move: he has said he did not know who she was and at first took her message for a fake.

Which magazine named Simone Biles its Sportsperson of the Year for 2024?

Sports Illustrated had not given the award to a gymnast since Mary Lou Retton shared it 40 years earlier; it cited Biles's three golds in Paris and the way she had changed her sport.

What design did Simone Biles choose for her first tattoo?

The Olympic rings, in plain black ink, were her way of marking her first Games; the butterfly on her hand and her birth year, 1997, were added in later years.

In 2016 Biles became the third gymnast, after Olga Korbut and Nadia Comăneci, to win which broadcaster's overseas sports personality award?

The BBC had last honoured a gymnast forty years earlier: Korbut won in 1972 and a 15-year-old Comăneci in 1976, and nobody from the sport won again until Biles's five medals in Rio.

Which coach, formerly of Madison Kocian, did Biles hire in October 2017 for her comeback?

Her longtime coach Aimee Boorman had moved to Florida after the Rio Games.

Biles became the second woman to win two Olympic vault titles, after which star of the 1960s?

Věra Čáslavská won her second in Mexico City, weeks after Soviet tanks had rolled into her native Czechoslovakia; she took four golds there and then married a fellow Czechoslovak Olympian in the host city.

After her day-care field trip, six-year-old Biles enrolled in a training programme at which gym?

She began training with coach Aimee Boorman there at age eight.

Why did Biles miss the London 2012 Olympics?

She was too young by a matter of months: gymnasts had to turn 16 in the Olympic year and Biles turned 15, so the US team won in London without her, and she took her first world title the next year.