‘I’m So Sorry’: Simone Biles’ Ex-Coach Opens Up About Unintentionally Abandoning Her During Parents’ Gym Crisis
“She’s like a second mom to me—I’ve been with her since I was seven, and we’ve shared this entire journey. So it’s very cool we could start and end the same way.” Together, Simone Biles and her second mom soared to three straight world all-around titles from 2013 to 2015, a feat no woman had ever achieved before. Under her guidance, the gymnast claimed four gold medals—in team, all-around, vault, and floor—and even battled through a bronze on beam.
This mother was none other than her former coach, who trained her in her early years, the coach who had one philosophy – prioritizing Biles’ well-being over mere medals. A philosophy that was challenged once. When and why?
“I didn’t realize how much my added responsibilities were affecting Simone until one day I stepped onto the floor and approached Simone, whom I noticed was in a somber mood,” recalled Aimee Boorman in her book, The Balance: My Years Coaching Simone Biles. She remembers asking her about what happened, and she broke down, and said, “You never coach me anymore! You’re just always in the office! You don’t even care!” The coach was shocked.
Embracing the gymnast in a big warm hug, she told her, “Oh, Simone, I’m so sorry. I’m right here. I haven’t gone anywhere. I’m always right here.” This was the time when Aimee and Simone’s parents were establishing the WCC, and as the coach recalls in her book, “I had been in the office more.” But in her defense, she felt that now that Simone is a world champion, she didn’t need her to look over her shoulder now and then.
But then it hit her, “While that was true, I also realized that after we had left Bannon’s and separated. Simone from all her friends and teammates, I was the one stable thing she still had in the gym.”
The 2013 World Championships were when Biles got her first world championship gold, but in 2014, things turned around when she and Aimee departed from Bannon’s Gymnastix, where Biles had trained since age six. The exit marked a pivotal stone in gymnastics history. In her book, the coach also claimed, “We had chemistry, and-knowing her so well and watching her grow up-I could tell just how much or how little she required each day. That was part of our magic together.“
Aimee Boorman began coaching Simone Biles in 2005, when Biles was eight years old. By this time, they had both known each other for 8 years or more, and the magic was bound to happen. Knowing what Simone was going through, Aimee had one thing to do: she said, “I needed to make sure Simone knew she was my priority.” Why? There was no point in working on WCC if Simone wasn’t taken care of. She handed off what she could of the administrative tasks she was attending to and made sure she was out on the floor next to Simone from that point forward.
One thing is clear in the mind of the coach of the goat, and she even jotted it down in her book. She wrote, “Success doesn’t breed comfort; it amplifies everything around you the good and the bad. The praise can be deafening and the ridicule can be crushing. Self-doubt, apathy, and insecurity will grab your ear to fill the void of a coach who’s not there to bat it away. “All of this happened just because Aimee was too busy with working on the WCC gym crisis.
The WCC gym crisis
In 2013, after Simone clinched her first world all-around title, her longtime coach, Aimee Boorman, expressed a desire to leave Bannon’s Gymnastix, the facility where Simone had trained since childhood. This development posed a significant challenge: finding a new training environment that would provide stability and continuity during Simone’s prime competitive years. Why find one when you can create one? Biles’ dad, Nellie, purchased a four-acre plot in Spring, Texas, and initiated the development of what would become the World Champions Centre. Initially, the gym operated out of a temporary warehouse, affectionately dubbed “The Shed“.
One of the early challenged that was faced by them was that there was no heat in the gym, Boorman recalls in her book, “On really cold mornings, we would bring small space heaters into the gym for the girls to sit in front of before stretching, and they would regularly come into the office to get warm.” Getting the tin can to convert into a functional gym was quite the work, and on top of that, it wasn’t the only responsibility on her head. The idea was, as later described, “writing a plan and organizing the details of the permanent World Champions Centre. This meant I wasn’t coaching as much while I focused on operations.”
The work didn’t end there. The inside of the gym still needed its final layout, more equipment had to be brought in, programs had to be planned out, and systems for sign-ups and staff pay had to be put in place—among many other things. Her book read, “Ron and Nellie had never run a gym before, so they relied heavily on my and Selinda’s experience. Additionally, I had to consider how I was going to staff a potentially large program.” This is where Jason Collins stepped up.
While the WCC focused on the women’s program, Collins was hired to develop the men’s one. He had been coaching since fifteen, but is also an accomplished opera singer. He attended the Juilliard School in New York and then traveled the world, singing in front of massive crowds in amphitheaters and concert halls. He stuck around for two months before finally moving out to take care of his ill father. After operating in a temporary warehouse, the Biles family invested in a state-of-the-art, 52,000-square-foot facility in Spring, Texas, which opened in 2016. Today, it has produced the likes of Simone Biles, Jordan Chiles, and many others.
