American gymnast Biles shatters her own expectations by taking home another four medals at the 2024 Paris Olympics
Despite battling a calf injury during the preliminary round, Simone Biles, an American gymnast, won three gold and one silver medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics and has become the most decorated American gymnast of all time, according to CNN.
She said, “I’ve accomplished way more than in my wildest dreams, not just at this Olympics, but in the sport,” Olympics.com says. She added she never thought she would return to the Olympic Games so walking away with four medals made her proud of herself, according to the website.
With 10 Olympic medals, she said she became interested in gymnastics when she was only 6 years old. She won a total of 37 medals starting with her first American Classic competition to the latest 2024 Olympic competition.
Before the start of the Olympics, Biles earned an automatic nomination by winning the all-around title at the U.S. trials for the 2024 Olympics in Paris, according to NBC. She said she knew she wasn’t done after the twisties she had right before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. In an article by Max Molski on NBC, twisties are described as a gymnastics phenomenon when an athlete suddenly loses their spatial awareness.
Biles won her first four Olympic gold medals at the 2016 Summer Olympics. According to the Los Angeles Times, she was nervous and didn’t feel like she belonged in the U.S. Olympian Club. She said what she was able to accomplish at her first Olympic games was insane.
Biles also won 31 World Championship medals with her career, a huge jump in 2013 when she won the U.S. and World Championships all-around titles in her first year at the senior elite level, according to the Brittanica website. She won a bronze and a gold medal at the Women’s Junior Olympic National Championships in 2010, the website says.
Standing at 4 '8', Biles became the first African-American woman to claim the all-around title. In 2022, Biles was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Joe Biden.
Biles grew up in Houston, Texas ,after she and her sister, Adria, were adopted by their grandparents, according to Britannica website. She married NFL player Jonathan Owens from the Chicago Bears in 2023, says the website.
According to NBC olympics website, she is often referred as the ‘GOAT’ which stands for "Greatest Of All Time" due to her striking performance over the last decade. She also had five skills named after her in the Code of Points. According to the website, a gymnast can have a skill named after them if they are the first to perform it in a major international competition.
Savatey Chhum, a freshman from Cambodia majoring in business management, said she was shocked to see how well Simone Biles performed in the Olympics. “I did not know who Simone Biles was before until I saw her everywhere on many social media platforms these past two weeks,” she said.
Chhum said she was watching the Olympic games from the TV screen in the Aloha Center and heard how loud the cheering was when Biles came on the screen. She said she was curious to see who it was and eventually found out it was Simone Biles.
Chhum added she aspires to be more like Biles in terms of her hardworking attitude and her persistence. She said she learned about Bile’s incident in the last Olympics and how she still didn’t give up on her dream.