After ‘Dancing,’ Biles to bask in post-Olympic break
Having wrapped up her stint on “Dancing With the Stars,” albeit one round sooner than her fans would have preferred, Simone Biles said this week she is ready to get back to enjoying her year away from gymnastics.
Biles, 20, of Spring, who won four gold medals and five total at the 2016 Olympics, will return home to spend time with family and friends after her run on the ABC show, which wraps up next week in Los Angeles.
“It (the show) really does change your life. Everybody goes in and comes out a different person,” she said.
“You learn to be confident not only in gymnastics but outside as well. That comes from having to get out of your comfort zone and learn new dances, whether they are sensual, romantic, energetic, whatever, and learn them quickly.”
Biles, along with partner Sasha Farber, accomplished on the dance floor what elite gymnasts can no longer accomplish in their sport — perfect scores of 10 — for two performances last week on the ABC show.
But it wasn’t enough to keep the pair from getting voted off one week short of the finals.
Biles is a pure competitor — witness her “Smiling doesn’t win you gold medals” retort when asked why she did not show more emotion when listening to judges’ comments — but was philosophical about the outcome.
“I wasn’t crushed,” she said. “You can’t change what happened. It all happens for a reason.”
Biles’ fans, in fact, may have been more upset when she was voted off than was Biles herself. Similarly, she was less ruffled by winning a bronze medal on the balance beam in Rio after a fall than were fans rooting for her to win an unprecedented fifth gold medal.
While she enjoyed her time on the show, she said she doesn’t miss gymnastics and has not kept up with competitive developments in the sport since the Olympics.
“I’m still on my year off, and I want to take that year and do as much as I can with it,” she said. “I miss playing in the gym, but I did it for so long. There’s a lot of stress involved, and you have to be so dedicated.
“To take a break for the first time in my life is relaxing and nice. I’m enjoying the time off that I have, and I’m so busy that there’s no time to miss (gymnastics).”
Biles has signed on with a new sponsor, the cosmetics case manufacturer Caboodles, and has a few promotional appearances lined up but hopes to spend time with family and friends in Houston and on vacation.
As for her memorable observation on “Dancing” that “smiling doesn’t win you gold medals,” Biles, who has a talent for pithy sayings, said the phrase “just popped into my mind.”
“I don’t think about those things. It’s just spur of the moment,” she said. “I definitely didn’t think it would go viral, but it did. It’s more of a positive, so we just kind of let it go.”