Sports Illustrated’s Sportsperson of the Year said in the magazine’s cover interview this week that it would be “greedy” to compete in the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.
“I’m at a point in my career where I’m humble enough to know when to be done. If you go back, you’ll be greedy. Those are the consequences,” Simone Biles told SI.
“But that’s also your decision to decide. What sacrifices would be made if I go back now? When you’re younger, it’s like, prom, college. Now it’s like, starting a family, being away from my husband. What’s really worth it?”
The four-time Olympian has already made her mark as one of the greatest athletes in history. The gymnast has won 30 World Championship medals, including 23 gold, and 11 Olympic medals, including seven golds. Biles opened up about the toll that the sport has taken on her body and mental health, especially after she pulled out of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
“Mental trauma from past years that can’t be swept under the rug anymore, that just is overflowing at that point,” Biles said. Biles recalled the days leading up to the postponed Tokyo 2020 Games, how the lockdown gave her too much time to think and how she felt something was not quite right when she returned to the gym.
While Biles would help her teammates qualify for the all-around finals, she eventually dropped out of the Tokyo Olympics after developing the twisties. Just months later, she would face the US Senate and testify against longtime national team doctor Larry Nassar.
Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in state prison for first-degree criminal sexual conduct, and 60 years in federal prison for possession of child pornography, Biles, who suffered at the hands of Nassar, tweeted that it was “impossibly difficult to relive these experiences”
After Tokyo and the trial, Biles worked on trying to find meaning in gymnastics again. She just wanted to feel safe in what used to be her safe place. Her parents and her coaches agreed that she would try to rediscover her love for the sport before she aimed at any particular competition. “The end goal wasn’t even the Olympics,” she says. “It was, like, be happy doing gymnastics again. Feel like you’re not gonna die.”
Biles made a dazzling return to the sport at the 2023 US Classic, with four medals, three of them gold. She then dominated the US championships and the world championships trials. At the 2023 Worlds in Antwerp, she became the first woman to land the Yurchenko double pike in international competition; it became the fifth skill named after her.
The following year, she won the Olympic trials and became at 27 the oldest woman to compete for the US in gymnastics at the Games in 72 years. She would go on to win three golds and a silver at the Paris Olympics.
Biles went on a tour around the US with a cast of elite gymnasts after the Games and hasn’t had the time to digest her impact on the sport. “I can see it, and I hear it from people, and I see a glimpse of it, but the full magnitude I don’t think I’ve realized just yet,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll realise ’til maybe I retire and look back in a couple of years.”
