The 27-year-old took to TikTok, posting a video of the team’s last practice at their local gym, before leaving for the Olympic Games on Friday night. It opens with the gymnast gearing up and excitedly saying, “This is our final practice at our training facilities before we go.”

Throughout the montage, viewers are treated to glimpses of Biles performing on the uneven bars. The video also features segments of Biles, Jordan Chiles, Joscelyn Roberson, and Tiana Sumanasekera as they practice their floor routines.

In one clip, Chiles comments, “We’re all surviving, I think,” highlighting the team’s camaraderie and determination. The video concludes with Biles executing several impressive flips on the balance beam.

Biles will lead the American team at the Games alongside Chiles, Jade Carey, Sunny Lee, and Hezly Rivera. Leanne Wong will join them as a travelling replacement, while Sumanasekera and Kaliya Lincoln will be non-travelling replacements.

In her illustrious Olympic career, Biles has amassed an impressive array of medals. At the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, she won four golds and one bronze. Although the 2020 Tokyo Games did not see her replicate the same level of success, she still secured a bronze and a silver medal.

Additionally, Biles boasts a remarkable record in World Championships with 23 golds, four silvers, and three bronzes, as well as two golds in the Pacific Rim Championships. Biles took two years off from competition following a mental health issue she experienced in Tokyo, something she hopes will not recur in Paris 2024.

After working extensively on herself over the past three years and with the support of her husband, Jonathan Owens, she aims to achieve all the goals she has set, “There are many different things on the table right now, and it’s not just about me and gymnastics. For instance, I share the sports space with my husband,” Biles says.

She has grown significantly, both professionally and personally, thanks to the professional help she has received and is now able to manage her fears: “Firstly, I remember my goals to avoid burning out, and we keep track of ourselves throughout the year. Secondly, there are so many things happening in my life outside the gym that sometimes it feels like my job is secondary,” says the gymnast.

Simone Biles is the most decorated gymnast of all time, earning her the GOAT title – the Greatest Of All Time.

The most outstanding gymnast of her generation is returning

to the Summer Games for a third time, hoping to add to her already impressive seven Olympic medals – four gold, one silver and two bronzes. After coming back from a bout of the “twisties” in Tokyo, she has not just looked like her old self over this past year − in many ways, it appears she’s gotten even better. It would not be a surprise at the Paris Games if she matches her performance from last year’s world championships, where she won four golds and a silver.

But what really makes Biles unique is her ability to change the sport by attempting feats that most men wouldn’t even try. Five skills bear her name: two on the floor, two on the vault, and one on the balance beam.

The US Olympic Women’s Gymnastics team

Biles will lead Jade Carey, Jordan Chiles, Suni Lee and newcomer Hezly Rivera in the team competition at the games. Biles is heavily favored to win her second all-around Olympic gold medal, and is tasked with leading the Americans to another team victory at the Games.

Cecile Canqueteau-Landi fit “in the box,” as she put it. She was skinny. She was blonde. She was pretty good at gymnastics.

And so at 9 years old, she was whisked away to become part of the French national team program, a path that ultimately led her to the 1996 Olympics.

There was reward in that journey. Yet looking back nearly three decades later, Landi wonders how many promising young athletes had their careers and their lives altered – and not for the better – because they didn’t fit someone’s preconceived notion of what a gymnast needed to look like by the time they reached their 10th birthday.

When Landi transitioned into coaching in the early 2000s, she vowed not to make the same mistake.

So maybe it’s not a coincidence that when Landi and her husband Laurent – himself a former French national team member – walk onto the floor at Bercy Arena for women’s Olympics qualifying next Sunday, they will do it while leading the oldest U.S. women’s gymnastics team – headlined by 27-year-old Simone Biles – the Americans have ever sent to a modern Games.

A healthy partnership

In another country in another era, maybe Biles becomes something other than an icon. Maybe she becomes a casualty.

“An athlete like Simone would never have reached her full potential in France,” said Cecile. “Because she would have been put aside because she didn’t fit that box.”

For the Landis – who began coaching Biles in 2017 – there is no “box.” There can’t be.

“It’s not the athlete that needs to adjust to the coaches,” Laurent Landi said. “The coaches need to adjust the athletes and the athlete’s abilities.”

Biles was already 20 and the reigning Olympic champion when the Landis agreed to helm the elite program at World Champions Centre, the massive gym run by the Biles family in the Houston suburbs.

They knew Biles fairly well at the time having already coached gymnasts who competed alongside Biles at several world championships and the 2016 Olympics. During the interview process, all three agreed there was no point – and no fun – in having Biles merely try to hold on to her otherworldly talent. To keep her engaged, they needed to make sure she kept moving forward.

The result has been perhaps the best gymnastics of Biles’ remarkable career, a stretch that includes three world all-around titles and another handful of entries in the sport’s Code of Points with her next name next to them, from the triple-double on floor exercise to the Yurchenko double pike vault that drew a standing ovation at the Olympic trials last month.

Biles views her relationship with the Landis as more of a partnership.

“They’ve been big mentors in like my adulthood (because) they got to see and harness the more mature Simone,” Biles said. “They’ve helped me a lot not just in the gym but out of the gym too.”

When Biles moved into her first house, Cecile who came over and showed her how to operate the dishwasher. When a gymnast who had just gotten their driver’s license had a problem with one of her tires, Cecile went to a nearby gas station and gave a tutorial on how to use the air pump.

“If we can help and they want the help, then why not?” she said with a laugh.

Changing with the times

The trick is finding a way to provide that help safely and productively, particularly amid a culture shift in the sport aimed at empowering athletes to take ownership of their gymnastics. It is a delicate needle to thread. What serves as motivation for one athlete could be construed negatively by another.

It’s a reality the Landis are well aware of as they try to find the proper balance between being too rigid and too lax. They grew up in a time when the coach/athlete relationship was one-sided. There was no back and forth. There was no discussion. The coach set the standards and expectations. The athlete met them or they didn’t last long.

The shift toward a more cooperative approach was overdue, but that doesn’t mean it is always easy. Laurent Landi admits he’s not the most patient coach, though those around him say he has mellowed a bit over the years. He also understands if he wants to keep doing this for a living, he didn’t have much of a choice.

“Yeah, there will be frustration,” he said. “But you can always go around some stuff and just take your pride (as a coach) away and make sure that the athletes still get the skill done.”

It’s an approach that helped World Champion Centre’s elite program send five athletes to the Olympic trials, with Biles and Jordan Chiles making the five-woman U.S. team while Joscelyn Roberson and Tiana Sumanasekera were selected as alternates.

It’s the kind of success Roberson envisioned when she moved to the Houston suburbs a few years ago to train under the Landis. She was intimidated at first before realizing her new coaches “have a million different ways to coach one skill,” a marked departure from what she was used to.

“We’re not always right,” Laurent said. “If you do your own way all the time, you will hurt the majority of the athletes. Maybe one will survive and will be an amazing person, amazing athlete but the (other) 90 percent, they will be broken. … We had to adjust to Simone, otherwise we would have broke her.”

It’s not just Biles’ age they had to accommodate, but her schedule. She is no longer a precocious teenager who buries herself in the gym. She’s a newlywed whose schedule is packed with everything from corporate commitments to building a house and a family with her husband, Chicago Bears safety Jonathan Owens.

“When (we) tell him he just hears ‘you’re missing practice’ and kind of freaks out,” Biles said. “Because he sees all the end goals and then he gets the calendar and then he’s like, ‘Oh, OK, that’s fine. We’ll do this today, we’ll do that.’ So it just takes time for him to process.”

Biles certainly appears well-prepared. She arrives in Paris at the height of her powers more than a decade after ascending to the top of her sport. She’ll be accompanied by a pair of coaches who view the trip as more of a business trip than a homecoming.

A new challenge awaits

While the Landis have been approached to take over the women’s national team program in France in recent years, returning never made much sense to them even with the women’s program is in the midst of a resurgence.

“I think our family will be very proud, probably more than we are,” Cecile Landi said. “Because in a weird way, it’s just work for us.”

And perhaps, goodbye too.

Cecile, long a supporter of NCAA gymnastics, earlier this year agreed to become the co-head coach at the University of Georgia. Laurent will remain at World Champions Centre in the short term until the Landis’ daughter Juliette – who will dive for France during the Games – graduates from high school next spring.

After that, who knows? The young gymnast who was put in a box has become a coach who no longer puts limitations on anyone, herself maybe most of all.

“I think I’ve done everything I could do in elite, and beyond what I could ever have imagined as a little French girl in a little town,” Cecile said. “I’ve coached the greatest of all time. I’ve coached many kids. I’ve had many great athletes in NCAA and elite that I feel like I want to try what’s next, a new challenge.”

With less than a week until the Paris Olympics begin, the planet’s finest athletes are preparing to compete for medals for themselves and their countries. The Olympics are a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for most athletes. The competition is so intense and rigorous that only a few athletes return, unless they are legends or start very young. While those competing now are in the spotlight, their future replacements are at home or in the gym, training for the next Olympic challenge. Such is the fierce nature of the competition.

US Gymnastics Team ready for Paris

One sport that demands near perfection is gymnastics. In Rio 2016,Simone Biles captured the world’s attention at just 19 years old, putting the United States at the top. In Tokyo 2020, Biles faced mental health challenges that prevented her from continuing, allowing China and Russia to take most of the medals. This year, with Biles and nearly the same team as in Tokyo, the US gymnastics team has completed their training and is ready to head to Paris. Biles shared a TikTok of their final practice, offering a sneak peek of what we might see in the City of Love.

Biles, who is the oldest U.S. gymnast to compete in the Olympics in 72 years, will serve as the team captain, and much is expected from her in what should be her final Olympic games. With a total of four gold medals already, if she secures two more, Biles will surpass the legendary Nadia Comaneci, placing her third in the all-time rankings. She would be behind only Czechoslovakia’s Vera Cáslavská with 7 and Russia’s Larisa Latynina with 9. All eyes will be on her as she competes, and hopefully, this time, the pressure won’t affect her.

Team USA: A Blend of Experience and Youth

Joining Biles on the US team are familiar athletes from the Tokyo Olympics: Suni Lee (21), Jordan Chiles (23), and Jade Carey (24). These gymnasts bring a great deal of experience and skill to the lineup. Adding a burst of new energy is 16-year-old Hezley Rivera, who is expected to become a significant player in future Olympics, especially with an eye on Los Angeles 2028. The combination of veteran athletes and emerging talent forms a robust team ready to take on global competition. Suni Lee, who claimed the all-around gold in Tokyo, will aim to defend her title and further add to her medal haul.

The US gymnastics team, blending the old guard and new talent, is primed to showcase their skills on the global stage. With Biles leading the way, they are set to captivate the world and continue their pursuit of Olympic glory.

As Simone Biles sprinted down the vault runway at the beginning of the women’s team final of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the eyes of the world followed her every stride. Biles had already compiled an unprecedented, record-breaking career, marking herself as the greatest ever gymnast and pushing the limits of gymnastics far beyond what anyone could have imagined. Her combination of technique, air-awareness and power had driven her to unheard of successes; she had not been beaten in an all-around competition since 2013.

But something was wrong. Although the famed Amanar vault is one of the most difficult skills in the world, Biles has made it look easy throughout her career. This time, though, she completed only one-and-a-half twists, a full twist short of the planned vault, before landing in a deep squat as she barely managed to stay on her feet.

Shortly after her mistake, Biles withdrew from the women’s team final and she later expressed the need to protect her mental wellbeing. It soon became clear that this was not merely a mental timeout in the middle of the Olympic Games. Biles was suffering from the Twisties, a mental block that caused the American to lose herself in the air whenever she attempted to twist. In such a dangerous sport, Biles risked seriously injuring herself if she tried to push through.

After withdrawing from all but one final, Biles returned on the final day to clinch a bronze medal with a downgraded routine that did not include her usual twisting. Despite her resilience at the end of the competition, Biles departed Tokyo heartbroken.

The reasons behind the mental struggles in Tokyo were varied, ranging from the nature of the Covid-19 restrictions to the general pressure on Biles, but there was another stressor. Biles was one of hundreds of gymnasts who had been sexually abused by the convicted former team doctor of the US team, Larry Nassar. As the only active gymnast among the survivors of Nassar, she later spoke about how she could not shake the feeling that she carried an immense weight on her shoulders.

In the months after Tokyo, Biles took a break from the gym and it seemed there was a fair chance that the world had seen the last of her. Instead, Biles’s name appeared on a list of participants at a Team USA training camp. Biles had managed to keep her return to training a secret and she left little doubt about her intentions as she dominated her first meet back.

Ten years after winning her first world all-around title in the very same arena, Biles made her global return at the 2023 world championships in Antwerp where she worked through one of the most incredible comebacks in recent years. Biles led the US team to gold and also won the individual all-around, balance beam and floor titles, along with a silver medal on the vault.

With her success, she earned the all-time record for Olympic and world gymnastics medals: 37. Biles has also now added five eponymous skills in the code of points, each of them some of the most difficult elements ever competed.

One of the most incredible aspects of Biles’s comeback is how she has managed to continue improving. With memories of the Twisties still fresh, Biles was hesitant to execute her elaborate twisting vaults so soon into her comeback. Rather than easing her way back into competition with a lesser vault, Biles opted for the most difficult vault imaginable: the Yurchenko double pike. No other woman has ever even come close to competing it yet in Biles case, the few times she has fallen on the skill, it has been because she has too much power.

Biles was still digesting the events of Tokyo last year and she had only a modest amount of training behind her. This year, she returns having gained significant confidence from her success in Antwerp and with another nine months (October to July) of work. No all-around champion has even made it to a third Olympics, yet she returns to the stage performing some of the best gymnastics of her career and looking to make up for the events of three years ago.

If you watched Simone Biles: Rising only to marvel at what the most decorated gymnast in history can do, that would be a couple of hours well spent. It is astonishing to see her moving through the air, rapidly contorting her body with such astounding motion that gymnastics is still having to adjust its parameters to accommodate her abilities. Moves have been named after Biles, some of which have been completed only by her.

But the Biles story is much more dramatic than her legendary physical prowess. This four-part documentary series, the first half of which arrives just before she returns to the Olympic stage in Paris, has more twists than even her most intricate routines.

It has been almost four years since Biles shocked the sporting world by withdrawing from the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, partway through the competition. She had been the face of the games, expected to break records, take multiple golds and cement her status as the greatest of all time. But Tokyo, which took place amid the restrictions and isolation of the Covid pandemic, did not go to plan.

“Your body can only function for so long before your fuses blow out,” says Biles today. She came down with a bad case of “the twisties”, in which gymnasts lose their sense of place and become disoriented, mid-air. “Most of the time, it’s unrelated to gymnastics,” notes one of her coaches, Laurent Landi, drily.

Simone Biles: Rising – the series is named after a tattoo on Biles’ collarbone, which is taken from Maya Angelou – balances a more general portrait of her life and career with questions about the demands of elite sport, particularly in a world of constant inexpert scrutiny via social media.

The film-makers have been given extraordinary access to the gymnast, her family and her home life. We meet everyone from her husband, the NFL player Jonathan Owens, to her mother, Nellie. We see her family gathered in front of the TV to watch her at the 2020 Olympics and see the moment that they realise things are falling apart. In the immediate aftermath of Tokyo, Biles films herself talking about shame and confusion. She admits that she “wanted to quit, like, 500,000 times”. She was not sure that she would ever be back.

There is a sense that, when it comes to public-facing figures, we can pay lip service to concerns over mental health while remaining irritated by the perceived “inconveniences” of non-visible health struggles. There is some score-settling on that front here. The pundits who rounded on her for “quitting” and “letting her team down” are broadcast in all their insensitivities. Biles reads accusatory tweets about her and the camera lingers on her face as she reacts. She hears the mean comments much more loudly than the supportive ones, she admits. A journalist from L’Equipe sums it up with a Gallic shrug: “How is it possible to deal with people who are so silly?” Much like Netflix’s 2021 documentary about the tennis player Naomi Osaka, this humanises the athlete and gently pleads for compassion.

Episode one is perhaps a little broad. It gives the impression of a compromise between all that intimate access and true candour, but, by episode two, the series has settled in comfortably. Having focused initially on the friction between public and private pressures, the second episode effectively develops this nascent indignation about the elite training that drives young girls to their limits, and beyond, while also expanding Biles’ life story beyond the basic biographical information.

It picks up as she prepares to return to competitive international gymnastics and goes back to explore the “very military” system that fostered her talents. She discusses her traumatic upbringing, her time in foster care and being adopted by her grandparents. She talks about the imprisoned former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar and the complexities of being a public survivor of sexual abuse and an advocate for victims. She talks about being a black woman in a sport with visual standards constructed around white girls and women. When she talks of Tokyo as a kind of trauma response, you begin to wonder how she functioned as she did for so long.

Gymnastics champion Simone Biles reflects on her previous Olympic competitions as she prepares for the Paris games in a new Netflix docuseries, “Simone Biles Rising.”

Biles made the surprising decision to withdraw from competition at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 after she was becoming disoriented in her routines and experiencing “the twisties.” In episode 1 of the four-part docuseries, filmed as the event was taking place and following her to the Paris games, Biles describes what she was feeling.

“I’m getting lost in my skills,” she says in a selfie video at the time. “I just don’t get how. It’s like, I’m so prepared that I don’t know if I’m overthinking. It’s getting to the point where it’s becoming dangerous because I’m getting lost on all of my floor skills.”

“I kinda felt like I was in jail with my own brain and body, just like, I just feel so ashamed,” Biles recalled after her decision to stop competing.

Biles, the most-decorated gymnast in history, said she struggled with the intense public scrutiny she faced for prioritizing her mental and physical health.

“Everywhere I went I felt like they could see ‘loser’ or ‘quitter’ across my head,” she reflects in the series. “I always felt like everyone was staring at me, even if they weren’t.”

In hindsight, Biles believes she was experiencing “a trauma response of everything that has happened”

Biles has testified that she was one of more than 140 female athletes sexually abused by former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, who was convicted and sentenced in a Michigan state court to up to 175 years in prison.

“Everything that has happened, I’ve just like, ‘I’ll push it down, shove it down, wait until my career’s done, go fix it,” she says in the series. “Then something like this happens — and unfortunately, to me, it happened at the Olympics.”

As for her decision to compete in Paris this month, Biles is doing it for herself.

“This time coming back, it’s truly for myself,” Biles says. “I never want to look back in ten years and say, ‘What if I could have done another Olympic cycle?’ I at least tried. I didn’t want to be afraid of the sport anymore because you know so much has happened in this sport, so much has scared the living s— out of me that I couldn’t have it take that one last thing from me.”

“Simone Biles Rising” is streaming now on Netflix.

Simone Biles‘ experience at the Tokyo Olympics was not easy. The seven-time Olympic champion was forced to withdraw from the competition because of ‘twisties’-a psychological problem that affects gymnasts and prevents them from controlling their bodies while performing aerial maneuvers.

The difficult experience took Biles away from the sport, and the gymnast has spoken extensively about her struggles with mental health.

“I am doing therapy weekly to keep everything in tune so that I feel comfortable and confident enough to be competing,” Biles told ELLE.

“It’s been a crucial part of my training regimen. I understand and realize I have to take care of my physical appearance as well as my mental.”

It is precisely that work that has helped the athlete believe in herself and get back on track to compete at her highest level in Paris.

In fact, she is more motivated than ever after overcoming her difficulties in Tokyo.

“I think because of everything I’ve been through, I want to push the limits. I want to see how far I can go. I want to see what I’m still capable of so that once I step away from the sport, I can be really happy with my career and say, I’ve given it my all and that’s how I currently feel in this position,” Biles said.

Finding the balance

Biles acknowledged that her personal circumstances have helped her grow as a person and put her in a good position to face potential obstacles.

“I have so much going on in my life outside of the gym that sometimes gymnastics feels like my side job. It used to be my main job and then everything else. But now life doesn’t slow down and I can’t put it aside anymore. No matter what happens you have to keep going. That’s the way it is,” she said.

Without a doubt, Biles‘ personal journey has helped her grow professionally. As always, she is a medal contender, and is looking to add to her already extensive collection.

Arguably the darkest day in the sporting history of the United States of America was when Larry Nassar was found guilty of widespread sexual abuse of young athletes.

Referred to by many as the largest sexual abuse scandal in sporting history, the 60-year-old former physician managed to prey upon hundreds of young girls as they were trying to develop their skills and become elite athletes.

Some very big names were victims of Nassar, such as Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney, and Aly Raisman. Some of the victims were as young as eight years old.

Nassar is currently serving a life sentence for his crimes but the suffering goes on for many, and a Netflix series titled ‘Simone Biles; Rising’ shares intimate details about the current Team USA gymnast and her experience with Nassar.

Biles’ brave comments

In the docuseries, Biles candidly admits, ‘I felt so naive all those years, thinking it was normal,’ about being sexually assaulted.

One scene shows Biles driving her car and then she says: “I was driving at 99, and I just remember breaking down and calling my mom. She asked me to pull over because I was crying so hard.”

Her mother, Nellie Biles, says: “She was just hysterical. She didn’t say anything. She just cried, and we just cried together.”

Despite Nassar being incarcerated in 2017, Biles made the brave decision to discuss what had happened to her on a podcast in 2018.

On the Call Her Daddy podcast, she said: “It was hard to get out of bed. It was hard to do anything. Everything felt heavy in the end of the world. And again, a lot of sleepless crying nights.

“It just felt very, I wouldn’t even say dehumanizing, but it felt like I held a lot of the guilt that wasn’t mine to hold. I think that was the hardest for me to process.”