topic of the month
Simone Biles
”I’m not the next Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps, I’m the first Simone Biles.”
Simone Biles
Y
ou can’t talk about gymnastics without mentioning Simone Biles. At just 24 years old, the young woman has already made history. Known for her gymnastics skills and gravity-defying performances, the Afro-American girl dominates the world of gymnastics. Her record-breaking achievements, countless medals, and numerous awards made her a legendary athlete. Simone Biles has been widely dubbed “GOAT” — the “Greatest Of All Time.” Since the beginning of her career, the superstar gymnast has changed the sport forever in so many ways. Simone Biles was born in 1997 in Ohio, USA, as the third of four children. Both of her parents struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction. As a toddler, Simone Biles was placed in foster care as child services determined her biological mother was unfit to care for her and her three siblings. Their father had abandoned the family early on. When Simone Biles was five years old, she and her younger sister were adopted and raised by their grandparents. “My road to success began the day my grandfather and his wife officially adopted my sister and me,” Simone Biles stated. Shortly after she was adopted, at the age of six,
4 - VOICES
she tried gymnastics for the first time while on a daycare field trip. The girl started life from an at-risk beginning to become a legendary gymnast. Gymnastics is not easy. It takes a lot of hard work and training to master each skill and apparatus – 4 for women: vault, uneven bars, balance beam, and floor exercise. Becoming an elite gymnast involves a lot of strength training, endurance training, and gymnastics. Despite her tiny stature being an advantage to perform gymnastics, she works hard at whatever she does. Simone Biles trains twice a day for a total of six hours five times per week and follows a strict diet. Since her first enrollment in an international competition in 2013, Simone Biles has kept on rewriting world gymnastics record books. As her nickname of the GOAT might suggest, Simone is the “first” in many categories. She is the most decorated gymnast of all time in the history with a combined total of 36 Olympic and World Championships medals – 27 of them being gold; during her first Olympics in 2016, she lightened up the competition by winning individual gold medals in the all-around, vault, and floor; bronze
