Simone Biles

Simone Biles is one of the most discussed gymnasts of her generation, both for her results and for the number of skills that carry her name across multiple apparatus.

Significance

Biles has won 11 Olympic medals (7 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze) across the 2016, 2020 and 2024 Games, including all-around gold at both Rio 2016 and Paris 2024. She also holds 30 World Championship medals, 23 of them gold — the most World Championship medals of any gymnast in the sport’s history — and is the first gymnast to win six World Championship all-around titles (2013, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2023). She is closely associated with raising the ceiling on difficulty in women’s gymnastics: five distinct skills carrying her name have entered the Code of Points, across floor exercise, vault and balance beam, including the “Biles II” — a triple-twisting double tuck on floor, first performed at the 2019 World Championships.

Background

Biles was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1997. She trained at Bannon’s Gymnastix and, from 2015, at World Champions Centre. Her early international career was coached by Aimee Boorman; she was later coached by Laurent Landi and Cécile Canqueteau-Landi. She competes in women’s artistic gymnastics (WAG), contested on vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor.

World Championships

Biles has won medals at six World Championships, and won the all-around title at every one:

Year	Gold	Silver	Bronze
2013	All-around, floor	Vault	Beam
2014	Team, all-around, beam, floor	Vault	—
2015	Team, all-around, beam, floor	—	Vault
2018	Team, all-around, vault, floor	Uneven bars	Beam
2019	Team, all-around, vault, beam, floor	—	—
2023	Team, all-around, beam, floor	Vault	—

At the 2018 Championships in Doha she won a medal in every one of the six events she could enter: team, all-around and all four apparatus.

The Olympic Games

• Rio 2016: four golds (team, all-around, vault and floor) and bronze on balance beam.
• Tokyo 2020 (held in 2021): after qualification, she withdrew from most of the competition, including partway through the team final, citing “the twisties” — a temporary loss of air awareness while twisting, which makes twisting skills unsafe to attempt. She returned for the balance beam final and won bronze, alongside team silver.
• Paris 2024: gold in the team event, all-around and vault, and silver on floor.

Named skills

Five elements in the Code of Points carry her name: two on vault (the Biles and the Biles II, a Yurchenko double pike), two on floor (the Biles, a double layout with a half twist, and the Biles II, a triple-twisting double tuck), and one on balance beam (a double-twisting double tuck dismount). Each is described in plain English, with the year it was first credited, on what is a Biles skill?. For how a skill earns a gymnast’s name in the first place, see how gymnastics skills get named, and for the vault family the Biles II belongs to, see the Yurchenko vault.

Why she matters to the sport

Biles’s record is most often discussed in terms of totals, but for newcomers the more useful point is what it shows about modern scoring. Under the open-ended scoring system the sport has used since 2006, a gymnast can raise their ceiling by performing harder skills, and Biles has repeatedly done so, including with skills that were new to the sport when she first performed them in international competition, which is how five of them came to carry her name. That is why her name comes up so often in explanations of the D-score and of how the perfect 10 gave way to open-ended scoring.