Simone Biles

Simone Biles (born Simone Arianne Biles in Columbus, Ohio on March 14, 1997) is an American gymnast, and one of the United States’ most decorated athletes. In 2014, she was accepted into UCLA and she verbally committed to the gymnastics team but planned to take a gap year to attended the 2016 Olympics. In 2015, she announced she would officially follow the professional route, and lost her NCAA eligibility. Luckily, it was the right decision because she seriously excelled at the Rio Olympics, and became a household name not only in the United States but around the world.

Career:

She is a three-time World all-round champion (2013-15) and a four-time United States national all-around champion (2013-16). Simone is the first African-American to be world all-around champion and the first woman to win three consecutive world all-around titles. Simone was a part of the Olympic gold medal-winning gymnastics team called the “Final Five” at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. She set a new American record for most gold medals in women’s gymnastics in a single Games. She won gold in the women’s individual all-around, vault, floor exercise, and women’s gymnastics team final. She also snagged a bronze medal in the balance beam event. Talk about athleticism!

After the Olympics, Simone competed on season 24 of Dancing With the Stars with pro Sasha Farber. The pair quickly became fan favorites on the show, and they repeatedly received high scores and plenty of praise from the judges, but were surprisingly eliminated just one week before the season finale. Despite placing fourth, Simone told HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY that her elimination came at the right time. “It is a blessing in disguise,” she said at the time. “I’ve been going non-stop since the Olympics and I feel like I couldn’t ask for more, what Sasha has done for me this whole entire season. I found out a lot about myself.”

She has since continued training, and posted a video in early 2020 teasing a move that has never been seen before in competition. Fans on Reddit noted the move she was practicing in the clip was the Yurchenko double pike. The move — which carries a high risk due to the possibility of head or neck injury — has only been performed by a handful of male gymnasts. No woman has done so in competition. The awe-inspiring clip shows Simone flipping through the air multiple times before landing in a foam pit. Tokyo 2020 may have been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic, but Simone is still in fine form.

Personal Life:

Simone is one of four children born to her mom, Shannon, who suffered from addiction issues when she was growing up. In 2003, her grandfather, Ron, and his wife, Nellie, adopted Simone and her sister and raised them in Texas. “My parents saved me. They’ve set huge examples of how to treat other people and they’ve been there to support me since day one,” she said during Dancing with the Stars about her grandparents-turned-parents who were in the audience at the time. “There’s nothing I could say to them to thank them enough. Even though there’s no right words maybe dance will say it for me.” She also added, “My biological mom was suffering from drug and alcohol abuse and she was in and out of jail. I never had mom to run to … I remember always being hungry and afraid.” Thanks to her grandparents, she grew up with a loving and supportive family!

In 2016, the World Anti-Doping Association (WADA) revealed that Russian hackers had released the confidential medical records of some Team USA Olympic athletes, including Simone’s personal filed. The American gymnast made an announcement after it was revealed she has attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD. “I have ADHD and I have taken medicine for it since I was a kid. Please know, I believe in clean sport, have always followed the rules, and will continue to do so as fair play is critical to sport and is very important to me,” she tweeted.

Just a couple of years later, Simone spoke out about the sexual assault scandal involving Team USA gymnastics doctor, Larry Nassar. She joined her teammates, Gabby Douglas, Aly Raisman, McKayla Maroney and hundreds more accusers who bravely revealed they had been abused by the doctor. “There are many reasons that I have been reluctant to share my story, but I know now it is not my fault. This behavior is completely unacceptable, disgusting, and abusive, especially coming from someone whom I was TOLD to trust,” she said. Simone also revealed that she used to “sleep a lot” when she was dealing with his sexual abuse as a kid, in a 2018 interview with actress Priyanka Chopra. “I told one of my lawyers, I said, ‘I sleep all the time because it’s the closest thing to death’,” Simone said. “I’m not willing to put that out there for the world to see,” she explained as to why she was reluctant to come forward with the accusation against Nassar at first, who is now serving an initial 40-175-year prison sentence. “They’re not going to see me as Simone the gymnast, they’re going to see Simone the sexual abuse survivor.”

Simone’s personal life was also thrust in the spotlight when it was revealed her brother Tevin Biles-Thomas was facing triple murder charges. He was arrested in Liberty County, Georgia on Thursday, August 29, 2019, in connection with a triple homicide of three people — DeVaughn Gibson, 23, Toshaun Banks, 21, and DelVaunte Johnson, 19 — who were shot and killed at a New Year’s Eve party in Cleveland on December 31, 2018. “My heart aches for everyone involved, especially for the victims and their families,” she said in a Twitter statement. “There is nothing that I can say that will heal anyone’s pain, but I do want to express my sincere condolences to everyone affected by this terrible tragedy.”

The Most Popular Questions About Simone Biles

Who is Simone Biles Dating?

Simone has kept fairly private about her dating life during her rise to fame. In 2017, the Olympian went public with her first boyfriend Stacey Ervin Jr., posting sweet tributes to him on Instagram and posting a constant feed of PDA pics on both her and his feeds. For three years, the pair seemed very happy together. Then, in July 2020, Simone confirmed they’d split after three years together. Fans has suspected that they’d called it quits after Simone failed to wish her a happy birthday in March. Still, it took an interview with Vogue for Simone to reveal the truth “It’s hard being young and having that long of a relationship and then ending it,” she said. “But it was for the best.”

The best indeed, as shortly after the announcement, Simone was posting photos of herself with a a new man: Houston Texans safety Jonathan Owens. As of August 2020, the NFL pro and Olympian have posted several, cuddly selfies together  and clearly seem to be enjoying each other’s company.

What Is Simone Biles’ Net Worth? 

As the most decorated gymnast in world champion history, Simone has brought home a lot of gold — and that’s translated into a lot of dough! In 2016, when she won four gold medals, it was reported that brought home $100,00k for those medals, plus another $10k for the bronze she won in Rio. After her big wins, she was able to stick the landing on some major endorsement deals with brands like Nike, United Airlines, Hershey’s and Kellogs, among others. Because of these endorsements, it is estimated that Simone is worth nearly $4 million.

When Did Simone Biles Start Gymnastics?

Simone Biles started gymnastics as a very young girl, though she did not start competing as a level 8 gymnast until 2007, at the age of 10. By 2011, she was competing at junior elite level, and within 2 short years, she became the ‘one to beat’ at the senior elite level, and in 2013, she made history for the first tomato when she became the first female African-American athlete to win god at the World Championships all-around. This was just the launch of her career, which let to continues successes, wining US and world titles in all-around competitions, and then on to the Olympics.

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