Profile | Simone Biles: biography, height, Yurchenko double pike and repeating historic Olympic Games success
- From her difficult childhood to winning four Olympic gold medals, here’s what you need to know about the 1.42-metre American
- The USA’s most decorated gymnast is equally influential off the floor, often calling out discrimination and bigotry
Four-time Olympic gold medallist Simone Biles is the USA’s most decorated artistic gymnast, but the magnitude of her influence goes well beyond floors, beams and vaults.
Biles has often spoken out about racial and gender discrimination, the horrific USA Gymanastics sex abuse scandal of 2018 of which she was a victim, the subsequent lack of organisational accountability, and why she “would not feel comfortable” allowing her future daughter to take part in the sport.
From being sent into foster care as a child, to debuting and winning at the national championships aged 15, and landing the fabled Yurchenko double pike vault – a feat no woman had ever completed, here’s what you need to know about the woman adoring fans call “$imoney”.
Biography
Simone Arianne Biles was born on March 14, 1997 in Columbus, Ohio. She is one of four children, all of whom reportedly taken into foster care at a young age. Despite the early uncertainty, Biles and her sister were eventually adopted by their biological grandparents. She joined her first gymnastics class aged five and began her lightning-quick ascent into the US history books.