Gymnast Simone Biles is soaring

SIMONE Biles has been busy. There was the tour with Kellogg’s, a victory lap through 36 cities where she performed with her gymnastics teammates from the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Then she published a best-selling memoir, Courage to Soar, went on her first date, attended the Golden Globe Awards and celebrated her 20th birthday.

And, yes, she’s started showing her moves on the ABC TV show Dancing With the Stars, dancing the Brazilian samba to the Destiny’s Child song Survivor – “I’m not gon’ give up, I’m not gon’ stop, I’m gon’ work harder” – to avoid elimination last Monday.

Three days later, she was high-fiving pupils in the halls of Arlington Science Focus Elementary School in Virginia in her first appearance as a spokeswoman for the Foundation for Advancing Alcohol Responsibility. She took time off from her sixhours-a-day dance training to talk with kids about Rio, peer pressure and the dangers of underage drinking.

“I just realised I’m really short,” she said, laughing while greeting kids who nearly reached her height (1.46m).

Was she ever bullied, one pupil wondered? “Yes,” Biles said, walking across the gym floor with a mic in hand, wearing a white tank top and maroon leggings. “You just have to have confidence in yourself.”

Did she have to give anything up to become such a great athlete? “Late nights with friends,” of course.

Was it hard to dance on television? “I’ve been barefoot my whole life,” she said, “so I call my shoes the devil.”

When Biles was a baby, her birth mother struggled with drug and alcohol addictions. Biles and her younger sister lived in foster care for a time before being adopted by their grandfather and his wife and growing up near Houston. She’s now working with an organisation that helps foster children, in addition to speaking out against underage drinking. “You don’t need to drink like all the other kids just to feel cool,” Biles told KidsPost. “You’ll be a lot healthier if you don’t do it” - scientists have found that alcohol can cause brain damage, especially in teenagers - “and 21 is not an old age to wait to, you know?”

Biles joined Dancing With the Stars to try something new but also to show that she’s “normal.” People “always see me in the gym,” she said, “but they only ever see me at my best, not whenever I’m frustrated, crying, trying to learn something. So they think I’m perfect, but no one is.” – Washington Post

PICTURE: HARRISON SMITH Olympic gymnast Simone Biles poses with Sasha Farber, her partner on the ABC television show Dancing with the Stars, at Arlington Science Focus Elementary School in Arlington, Virginia.