Simone Biles, a 23 year-old decorated olympic athlete, recently added another world title to her list of achievements. Biles took her 27th world title after competing in the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships Saturday, October 8. Biles competes in artistic gymnastics which contains vault, uneven bars, beam, and a floor routine.
At a young age, Biles and her sister, Adria were adopted by their grandfather and his wife due to the girls parents’ struggle with alcoholism. Biles, at just six years-old, was quickly noticed by gymnastic coaches. The coaches insisted that she would receive coaching.
“What surprises me is that she can mess up,” former gymnast and judge Micky Conner said. “But she doesn’t stop. She goes right through, she pounds it right through.”
In 2011, Biles competed in her first junior national competition, placing third overall and winning first place for her vault performance. To compete as competitively as she did, Biles was homeschooled and started training long hours everyday. Working as hard as she did, Biles decided in 2021 to take a two year break to focus on her mental health.
Level 10 gymnast Sydney Mullen is taking a step back after her recent ankle surgery, which relates to Biles mental break. Biles’ hiatus shows the importance of mental health awareness for athletes and learning to take time to focus on it. Even though Mullen is taking time off from competing, it will likely benefit her in the long run, physically. Since coming back from her break, Biles has taken the screen and shown that she is still on top.
“Everyone calls her the GOAT, which I can see why, she just never gives up.” Mullen states. “She also inspires kids about mental health.”
During the 2016 Rio Olympics, Biles competed in her first Olympic games. At just 19 years old-Biles won gold for all her events besides the beam in which she received bronze. Gymnastics scores for minor and NCAA are given out of ten, but for higher ranking gymnasts, scores are much greater due to D and E scoring.
In highly competitive gymnastics like the Olympics, “The Perfect 10” becomes far too low of a score to rate these athletes. D score is known as difficulty and E score is the execution of the performance. According to USA Today Biles scored 14.533 at the World Artistic Championships. Biles made history for men’s and women’s gymnastics by taking her 6th overall world title and winning her 34th medal (in the Olympics and world championships).
“Her moves are just so daring and clean cut when she does them,” Conner says.
In the event before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Biles faced what gymnasts call the Twisties. This is when the gymnast doesn’t know where they are in the air. With stress and lack of confidence weighing on her, Biles chose to not compete in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Although after competing in The World Artistic Gymnastics Championships back in October, Biles moved one step closer to the olympic trials.
“She took that time back, just to take a break,” Mullen said. “But then she found her love again.”
Sophomore Lillian Liles is a Louisa athlete who used to do gymnastics and cheer but decided to run cross country and track instead. As an athlete, she finds it inspiring that Biles, as a high ranking athlete, still finds time to focus on herself and her mental state.
“She really shows that you can take breaks, and still come back and be at the same level.” Liles says.
