Olympian is better than ever
Despite other activities, layoff, Biles improving from Rio Games
Five months into her return to full-time training and 19 months since her last competition at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, even Simone Biles is sometimes amazed at what Simone Biles can accomplish.
Biles, 21, the four-time Olympic gold medalist from Spring, is working every day but Sunday at the family-owned World Champions Centre in suburban Montgomery County alongside new coaches Laurent Landi and Cecile Canqueteau-Landi and a new training partner, 2016 Olympic team alternate Ashton Locklear.
She won’t compete again until late July, but as her time in the gym increases while red-carpet walks, award shows and promotional appearances decrease, Biles and Landi agree that things are going remarkably well.
“A lot of the times when I come into the gym I shock myself, especially how I’m still improving, especially from Rio, even there,” Biles said before a recent workout. “It’s kind of crazy.
“Once it comes time to put it all together in competition, that will be the real test. But as I’ve been training, I guess I would say I am better than I was in Rio.”
First birthday break
The familiar routine of six-hour daily practices, even with new faces on hand, lends a degree of normalcy in a life that has known considerable upheaval since 2016, from the hectic months following Biles’ Olympic victories to the turmoil that continues to engulf USA Gymnastics in the wake of the Larry Nassar scandal.
Biles has spoken her piece on that topic and may continue to do so as she sees fit, but her daily focus is adding the extra half-twist on vault, a forward tumbling element on floor, an added turn on balance beam and a better foundation on uneven bars to what may be, even after her post-Olympics layoff, potentially the best all-around routine in the world.
“When we started (in November), she had so many commitments that it was a struggle for us to keep improving,” Landi said. “We would see improvement, and then she would have to be gone and her mental and physical edge would fall off. It was challenging.”
Among the breaks from training was a mid-March trip to New Orleans in the wake of her first 21st birthday, which Biles described as her first birthday break since she became an elite gymnast.
Which raises the question: Why work when you can play, especially when work raises the inevitable questions of whether Biles can become the since Vera Caslavska in 1964-68, competing in a different era of women’s gymnastics, to win back-to-back Olympic all-around gold medals?
Biles, as always, is reticent about spelling out goals — she hates, she said, for people to imposes goals on her before she has taken the step to express them in public on her own terms — but acknowledges that the challenge of achieving the improbable is what drives her at the moment.
“I would rather risk it now than, 20 years from now, being like, ‘I wish I would have tried again. I wonder what would have happened,’ ” she said. “Twenty years from now, I can now say, ‘well, at least I tried.’ ”
Even for the best in the world, though, trying has its challenges.
“When I’m having a hard day, it’s, ‘Whoa, why am I back in the gym working?’ ” she said. “But at the end of the day, you have goals you are trying to achieve, and that reminds me of why I’m here.” Different routines
Landi, who coached Olympic gold medalist Madison Kocian in suburban Dallas before coming to Houston six months ago to succeed Aimee Boorman as Biles’ coach, said Biles has shown she can perform her Rio routines at a top level while also working in new elements.
“But we don’t want to do the same. We want to do something different, first and foremost on bars,” Landi said. “If you do the same thing it becomes boring and you don’t want to push yourself. You need something to aim for.”
Detailing event by event progress, Biles has added an extra half-twist into the foam practice pits on each of the two vaults she performed in Rio and on floor has added a forward tumbling element known as a salto to fulfill a new requirement in the International Gymnastics Federation’s scoring system.
Her floor music, she said, is a Middle Eastern motif — “different than anything I have done but still fast and upbeat” — and her balance beam is about 80 percent the same as the one she performed in Rio, with the addition of a half-turn on one of her opening moves.
As for uneven bars, the only event in which she did not make the event final in Rio and where Kocian, Landi’s former student, won a silver medal, “It’s still not typically my favorite event,” Biles said. “I have to put in the extra work on that event. Bars is more mental.”
Landi said Biles’ Rio routine on bars, updated to deal with changes in the code of points scoring system, is good enough to get her to finals at major events if she can, indeed, master the mental game.
“If she really believes, she has the skill and the routine that is good enough,” he said. “If she tells herself she can do it, then she will be able to compete in finals.”
At 21, at the upper end of the age range for elite gymnasts, Biles said she and the Landis (Cecile Canqueteau-Landi coaches Biles on balance beam and is her choreographer) focus on quality rather than repetition during workouts.
Landi said Biles “trains smart rather than just training harder. What will be beneficial is her maturity and the way she knows her body and mind.”
Biles was a spectator this weekend as USA Gymnastics staged selection competition at the Biles-owned gym for an upcoming international event. But in July 27-28 in Columbus, Ohio, at the U.S. Classic along with Locklear, who is recovering from shoulder surgery, she will be once again the focus of attention.
“Ashton and I were talking about having to compete again, which is crazy,” she said. “People last saw me in Rio, when I was at the absolute top shape of my life, and now I have to work back up to that again. It's very weird and different, but I’m excited for it.
“As you become a certain face of the sport, the expectations get bigger and everyone expects you to be the best. I try not to think too much about it. I have goals set for myself, and even if they aren’t as high as everyone wants, they are mine, and at the end of the day I’m happy.” Getting through it
As for Landi’s expectation for Biles’ return, he said, “If she is as good as in 2016, I’ll take it. She could become better.”
As for the ongoing questions about USA Gymnastics, which is the subject of inquiries by Congress and the U.S. Olympic Committee, she prefers to keep those thoughts to herself for now.
“Everyone is different on how they deal with all the things happening,” she said. “I have my different ways. For me, that’s private, but I’m getting through it.
“Having Ashton in the gym helps a lot. We have been through some of the same things. We are both veterans, and people expect more of us and expect us to be leaders, which I hope to step up and be when we compete again.”