4f t 9in pocket powerhouse leaps for glory
HER rise to superstar status has been as stratospheric as one of her leaps from the beam, vault or gym floor.
Despite being too young to qualify for the London Olympics in 2012, Simone Biles was already being called the greatest gymnast who ever lived before she and her US team mates won the women’s team gold in Rio on Tuesday.
And last night she was hoping for her second gold of the Games, in the women’s individual all-round final.
Indeed, the 4ft 9in gymnast can jump twice her own height and has been described as flying through the air ‘as if she were part bird and part cannon ball’.
She already has her own move on the floor called ‘The Biles’ – a double flip with half twist which she lands blind after seemingly defying gravity.
The bubbly 19-year-old Texan is the three-time world all-around champion, three-time world floor champion and three-time world balance beam champion. Her total of ten gold medals at the world championships are the most that any woman has won.
Even with the brilliant feats of gymnasts such as Nadia Comaneci and Olga Korbut still very much in living memory, experts are already running out of superlatives to describe the pocket powerhouse.
‘I don’t think it’s possible to put into words how good she is,’ retired British gymnast Beth Tweddle told the BBC yesterday. She added that on some occasions Miss Biles has even been ‘winking to cameras’ halfway through the routines.
Miss Biles’s peerless sporting achievement is all the more astonishing when one considers the start she had in life.
Born in Columbus, Ohio, her mother was a drug addict who was unable to care for her four children. Young Simone was initially placed in foster care, but at the age of three was adopted by her grandfather and step-grandmother, Ronald and Nellie Biles, and lived in the Houston sub- urb of Spring.
Mr Biles, a retired air traffic controller, and his wife, a former nurse, home-schooled Simone. And observers say their humility has rubbed off on her, as a few months ago she insisted she would just be happy to make the US Olympic team – let alone win gold.
She was six when she first tried gymnastics and was training with a coach by the age of eight. Within a year of beginning her sporting career in 2011 – training 32 hours a week – she had won a place on the US junior team.
A Roman Catholic, she is in the gym six days a week but takes Sundays off to go to church. She attributes much of her success to her punishing schedule – but insists she wouldn’t be where she is without Ron and Nellie, who she regards as her parents.
Mrs Biles has recalled how her granddaughter ‘never missed’ a training session, adding: ‘Even if she was sick, I would tell her she should stay home and she would say, “No, I have to go to practice!”.’ She has said that Miss Biles had to be mentally strong from a very early age.
And the Biles family are determined that the Olympian’s rapid superstardom doesn’t go to her head. At home in Houston, her household chores include feeding the four family dogs.
‘Not possible to say how good she is’