Why Simone Biles is one of the greatest athletes of all time: A look ahead at the Paris Olympics

(NEW YORK) — American gymnast Simone Biles is considered by many to be the G.O.A.T — the Greatest Of All Time — and for good reason.

“I’m not the next Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps. I’m the first Simone Biles,” she told reporters at the 2016 Olympics.

Here’s a look at Biles’ historic gymnastics career thus far as she heads to her third Olympic Games, this year in Paris, France:

Most decorated gymnast of all time

Her rise to fame began in the wake of the 2012 Olympics, which Biles was too young to qualify for.

In 2013, at the age of 16, she secured four medals — two golds — in her first appearance at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships.

In 2014, she won four golds and a silver at the competition. In 2015, she scored another four gold medals and a bronze. In 2018, she won four golds, one silver, and one bronze. In 2019, she won five gold medals. In 2023, she won four golds and one silver.

Overall, she’s scored 30 world titles, 23 as a gold medal winner, according to the official Olympics website.

In her first Olympic Games in 2016, Biles won four gold medals and one bronze. In Tokyo, she won one silver and one bronze before sitting out for the rest of the competition to focus on her mental and physical health.

Biles is the most decorated gymnast in history — male or female — according to the Olympics. In all, she has 37 world and Olympic medals combined.

She has five moves named after her

Biles now has five signature moves named after her in three different events: on the floor, on vault, and on the balance beam.

“Many people aren’t even attempting to do them because there’s such high difficulty high risk maneuvers, and she does them with complete ease and effort,” Dominique Dawes, a three-time Olympian and 18-year gymnastics veteran. “It’s amazing to watch what she’s doing. And she does it with a smile on her face.”

For a move to be named after an athlete in gymnastics, the gymnast has to submit a video of them performing the move to the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique Women’s Technical Committee.

The committee determines the difficulty of the skill, and if it receives a high enough difficulty score, it is then eligible to be named.

Then, a gymnast must perform the move without “a major fault” at an international competition.

The “Biles on the floor” — first successfully completed by Biles on the world stage in 2013 at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships — is a double layout with a half-twist, which means that her body remains straight and elongated as she flips twice.

Her second signature move on the floor, “Biles II,” was first successfully completed on the world stage in 2019. For this move, Biles performs a triple-double, meaning she Biles flips twice while twisting three times before hitting the ground.

The Biles on the vault is a round-off, into a back hand-spring with a half turn, completing the move by twisting twice in a somersault. It one of the most difficult vaults in women’s artistic gymnastics, with a difficulty score of 6.4.

Biles II on the vault is the most recent move to be named after the athlete. In 2023, she became the first woman to land the Yurchenko double pike, a move that consists of a backflip off the vault and two full rotations in a pike position before landing.

The Biles on the balance beam, completed in 2019, features a double-double dismount from the beam — two flips and two twists.

Dawes was a gymnast during the old ways of scoring — which is when gymnasts aimed simply for a “perfect 10.” Now, gymnasts are scored on two metrics — the perfect 10 of execution and the open-ended scoring of difficulty that gymnasts have free reign of collecting points on.

Dawes said that with the old way of scoring, there was “no need to push yourself beyond that value.” Now, “sky is the limit” for athletes like Biles.

“It really is Simone versus herself.” Dawes said. “That’s really what makes her one of the greatest of all time … Back then they used to cap our scores. And so now with this new scoring system, the sky is the limit for athletes like Simone, who’s very talented. And so if she does a higher, difficult maneuver on any of the different pieces of apparatus, she’ll actually get credit for it.”

Prioritizing her mental and physical health

Simone Biles pulled out of the Tokyo Olympics before finishing the individual all-around competition and the team final following a shocking stumble on vault.

“We wholeheartedly support Simone’s decision and applaud her bravery in prioritizing her well-being. Her courage shows, yet again, why she is a role model for so many,” USA Gymnastics said in a statement.

Her exit shined a light on mental health among elite athletes who face intense pressures as the world watches. She later also discussed how her exit was tied to her struggle to recover mentally after being sexually abused by former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar.

Biles has also been outspoken about experiencing depression and having to take anxiety medication in the fallout of the Nassar abuse.

“As a recent competitor in the Tokyo Games who was a survivor of this horror, I can assure you the impacts of this man’s abuse are not over or ever forgotten,” Biles said at a 2021 Congressional hearing. “The announcement in the spring of 2020 that the Tokyo Games were to be postponed for a year meant that I would be going to the gym, to training, to therapy, living daily among the reminders of this story for another 365 days.”

Biles qualified in all six of the women’s gymnastics finals at the Tokyo Olympics and was expected to win an unprecedented six gold medals. The goal was to become the first woman since 1968 to win back-to-back titles in the all-around.

“I just never felt like this going into a competition before,” Biles said at a press conference Tuesday following the team final. “I tried to go out here and have fun, and warm up in the back went a little bit better, but once I came out here I was like, ‘No, mental is not there.’”

“It’s been really stressful this Olympic Games, just as a whole,” said Biles to reporters at the time. “It’s been a long week. It’s been a long Olympic process. It’s been a long year.”