by Simone Biles
On the last day of camp, Martha put to rest all the speculation about who would get the upcoming assignment. “The two girls who will be competing at the American Cup this year are”—she paused and looked down the whole line of girls before saying the names—“Katelyn Ohashi and Simone Biles.”
Katelyn and I were like, Yesssss! We turned to each other and high-fived with both hands; we couldn’t have been more excited to be going on assignment together. Martha then announced that Kyla Ross would be the traveling alternate. Even though she wouldn’t compete, she’d act as an unofficial mentor for Katelyn and me.
Kyla, Katelyn, and I got really close on that assignment. I loved how smart my teammates were, and how they could always be counted on to perform their routines with consistency, making everything look easy. They both helped me really understand the importance of consistency in my gymnastics, and I learned so much about how to carry myself on the elite competition circuit just from being around them. Katelyn and I had very similar personalities; we were both always giggling about something and liked to have fun. Whenever our coaches saw us together, they’d shake their heads and say, “Oh-oh, here comes double trouble.”
Kyla is a lot quieter, but only at first. When you get to know her, you realize she’s really funny and a blast to hang out with. She tricks people that way. I remember this one time we were rooming together on an international trip. We had just arrived at the hotel and I went to take a shower, but I couldn’t find any full-sized towels in the bathroom. All I saw were a bunch of small hand towels folded on the basin. After my shower, I picked up one of the hand towels and walked out with it wrapped around me.
I said, “Wow, Kyla, this is going to be really tough for you because you’re taller than me and the towels here are really small. Look, barely covers my chest.”
Kyla cracked up. “Simone, that’s a hand towel,” she said. She walked into the bathroom, then reached up to a shelf above the shower stall and got me a full-sized towel. “They’re up here,” she said. “You just couldn’t see them, shorty.”
“Um, thanks,” I said, laughing too.
Kyla made sure I understood that getting the American Cup my first time out was a very huge deal. “Whoa, congrats,” she’d told me. “That’s a really big meet for your first assignment. Big crowds, lots of publicity and television coverage. But don’t worry. Just go out there and have fun.”
Easier said than done! I ended up feeling really sick on competition day. My stomach felt as if it was twisted up in knots. I kept stretching and moaning, pain stabbing me with every move. After a while, Martha came over.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“My stomach hurts a lot,” I admitted.
Martha didn’t seem that worried, and told me that other gymnasts she’d coached had suffered the same stomach pains when they were anxious before meets.
Once I realized the knots in my stomach were just nerves, the pain eased slightly. I think I was just overwhelmed at having to perform on this big stage in front of Martha. I didn’t want her to regret choosing me for the assignment out of all the other girls she could just as easily have chosen. The meet actually went really well until I got to beam. In fact, up until that point, I’d been in the lead, with Katelyn right behind me. But on the beam, I suddenly went crooked on a double back-handspring layout series, and I crashed sideways to the floor.
Oh, I was horrified. On the YouTube video of my beam routine, you can actually see my face crumple as I fight back tears. I remember standing there thinking, You just fell off the beam on national TV. Your first assignment. You’re doomed, Simone. And the next thought: What is Martha going to say to you after the meet? Oh my gosh, you’re going to be in so much trouble. At first, that’s all I could think about—how mad Martha was going to be, how disappointed. Fortunately, the thought that came on the heels of that one saved me: Oh, snap! You’ve got a routine to finish! Get back up on that beam!
When you fall off an apparatus, you have thirty seconds to remount the equipment. I realized I’d lost track of the time, and so hurriedly, I climbed back up. I finished the routine the best I could, nailing the tumbling part of my dismount but taking a big step on the landing.
“Way to finish!” Aimee said as I came down off the mat. She usually stays really positive during a meet. She figures it does no good to harp on mistakes in a routine that’s over and done with when I’m trying to get my head ready for the next event. There’s time to correct mistakes later, but at the meet, she’ll always find the thing in my routine she can praise. Now, seeing how upset I was, she said, “Calm down, Simone. It’s just another meet.” But I barely heard her. I was so scared of what would happen when Martha got to me. To make matters worse, television cameras were zooming in on my face, and reporters were following me around, even to the bathroom, waiting to see if I would cry. No way would I let them see me cry.
And you know what? After the meet, Martha wasn’t angry at all. In fact, she said she was proud of me! “You’ve just got to work on that beam routine till you’re really confident in it,” she said, “but overall, you did really well. Katelyn came first and you came second. It was a good first assignment.” She put her hands on my shoulders and rocked me back and forth a little before adding, “Now you just got to get that head screwed on right.”
Meanwhile, in my life away from gymnastics, an exciting thing had happened: my parents had agreed to get me a car for my sixteenth birthday. I was super excited to learn how to drive. As soon as I’d turned fifteen, I’d signed up for driver’s ed to get my learner’s permit. After that, I started bugging my dad to let me get behind the wheel of his truck. He had a better idea. “I think we need to get you a car so that when you take the test, you’ll be in a car you’re comfortable with,” he said. As usual, Dad had done his research. “The Ford Focus is one of the safest cars for teens right now,” he told me. “It’s top five, so that will be the model you’re getting, but I’ll let you pick the color.” Soon after that, he took me to an auto show, where I picked out a car in this really pretty turquoise blue.
This was right before I traveled to Europe for my first international team camp, followed by meets in Italy and Germany. We’d be gone for the two weeks in March, and I’d turn sixteen while in Italy. Secretly, I hoped that when I got back home, a shiny new turquoise-blue Ford Focus would be waiting for me in our driveway. I was daydreaming so much about that car on my overseas assignment, it helped distract me from the stress of competition—which might be why I performed at those meets as well as I did. At the Jesolo Trophy in Jesolo, Italy, the USA women won team gold, and I won the all-around title, as well as taking first place in vault, beam, and floor exercise. A couple of weeks later, at a meet in Germany, my team again won gold, and I placed first in vault, beam, and floor, taking silver in the all-around behind Kyla Ross.
But when I got home, there was no car in our driveway. I ran into the garage thinking maybe my new car was parked in there, but it wasn’t. I thought, Okay, maybe they’re waiting, and I let it go. I was jet-lagged and too happy about how my meets had gone to dwell on it much. I just shrugged and went to my room, took a shower, and fell right to sleep.
I woke up hours later to find Adria in my room. “Hey, Simone, I got you a birthday present,” she said, resting a large package on my bed. I tore open the wrapping paper to find the zebra-print fitted car interior that Adria knew I wanted.
I hugged my sister, and ran into my parents’ room to show them what Adria had given me. “Dad, since I don’t have a car yet, can I see how it fits the steering wheel and the seat of your truck?” I begged.
“Okay,” he said, “but just wait five minutes.”
“Wait?” I asked. “Why?”
“Just a few minutes,” Mom said, smiling mysteriously. I was totally confused and starting to become a little suspicious. Five minutes later, my parents said, “Okay, let’s go to the garage. Let’s see how the zebra cover fits the truck.”
When I opened the
garage door this time, there was my beautiful turquoise-blue car! I started freaking out and jumping up and down and screaming, “I love you, Mom! I love you, Dad!” and hugging them. They told me that our next-door neighbor, Mr. Jim, had hidden the car in his garage, and right when Adria gave me my present he’d been moving the car to our garage.
Later that day, my uncle Barnes came over and helped Dad install the zebra interior in my car. “Are you sure about this print?” Dad said when they were finished. “Your car just looks nuts.”
But I loved it. “It’s my own special touch,” I told him.
Still, I had to admit my father looked really weird against that zebra-print interior. But since I didn’t yet have my license, he had no choice but to drive in my car with me. That really motivated him to teach me how to drive, so I could pass my driving test and he wouldn’t have to be seen inside my zebra-print car anymore.
My dad taught me the basics in a huge, empty parking lot. Then it was time to take the show on the road. The first time I drove on a highway, with traffic, I was so tense that my legs were like sticks that wouldn’t bend. I was actually sore the next day. The whole time, Adria was in the backseat of the car yelling, “We’re gonna die! She’s gonna kill us all.” Thanks, sis!
After a while, I started driving us all the way home from the gym every evening, and my dad went from nervously shouting at me to, “Look left, look right, look over your shoulder, check your blind spot, stop at the stop sign, put on your indicator, watch out for that car,” to just sitting quietly beside me as I drove. One night, he actually started snoring.
“Adria, my teacher’s sleeping,” I said to my sister in the backseat. There was no answer. She was sleeping too.
A couple of months later, I took my driving test. There was a scary moment when rain began to sprinkle and I realized I didn’t know how to turn on my windshield wipers. My tester hadn’t arrived yet, so I rolled down the window in a panic and called out to my dad, who was waiting on the sidewalk. He leaned in the window and quickly showed me what to do. I ended up getting 100 on my driver’s test, even though the tester covered my backup camera with a sheet of paper during parallel parking. You’re supposed to do it by looking behind you, but I only knew how to parallel park using that camera! Luckily, the paper slipped off the camera and I stole a quick glance before my tester could notice me doing it. That’s how I managed to parallel park perfectly.
When I got home, I quickly discovered why my parents had been so agreeable about me getting my own car. “Well,” my dad said, handing me my car’s extra set of keys, “you’ll be driving Adria to school this year.” He explained that as busy as he and my mom were running fourteen nursing homes, in addition to all the drop-offs and pickups at Adria’s school and our gymnastics practice sessions, they needed another driver in the family. Plus, in the fall, Adria would be starting ninth grade at a public high school that was half an hour away.
I tried to get out of it. “But, Dad, Adria has to be at school at 6:15 a.m., and I don’t have practice till nine. I’m going to have to wake up at, like, five in the morning to get her there on time. That’s so not fair!”
“The joys of car ownership,” my father said, sauntering away from me cheerfully.
So every morning when I wasn’t out of town for a gymnastics meet, I’d roll out of bed and get in the car to take Adria to school. Some mornings my sister would sleep past her alarm or forget to turn it on, and I’d have to bust down her door. “Adria, get up! Get up!” I’d yell. Because if I had to wake up at 5 a.m., she better be up too. Then I’d drive her to school and drive myself back home, thirty minutes each way. That left me with hardly enough time to make breakfast and get myself dressed before driving to morning gym practice forty-five minutes away. It was torture. Thankfully, it only lasted one year because Adria homeschooled with me during tenth grade. But she decided she missed being in public school with her friends and reenrolled there for eleventh grade. By then she had her driver’s license and a car of her own, and so I was finally free. But, man, driving her to school was the worst. I still can’t believe our parents made me do that!
Just kidding. Everybody knows I’d do anything for my sister.
My sweet new ride wasn’t the only perk of turning sixteen. On the competition circuit, I was now considered a senior, going up against Olympic stars like Gabby Douglas, Aly Raisman, and Kyla Ross. There was no question I could do the big skills, and yet as I went up against these talented girls, a part of me wondered if my recent success was a fluke. Get that head screwed on right, Martha had said after my fall off the beam at the American Cup. Her manner had been both stern and kind, as if she believed in my potential.
But as relieved as I’d been that she wasn’t angry, I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that I would’ve been on track to take first place in the entire meet if I hadn’t gone crooked on beam. It’s crazy, but instead of that whole experience pushing me to train even harder, I began slacking off in practice. Maybe I was afraid of making an all-out effort and then failing. Worse, what if I kept winning? That was a lot to live up to! Could I really meet such high expectations from everyone? Was I really good enough?
For months, Aimee and I butted heads in the gym, but my casual attitude didn’t show in my competitive performance right away. The truth is, I was as astonished as everyone by my rookie success. Unfortunately, no matter how many times Aimee warned, “You need to train as hard as you compete, Simone,” I seemed to think I could just get up there during competition and pull a medal-winning performance out of the hat. It was a delusion that would put me on a collision course with reality at the US Secret Classic meet the following July. But that was still in my future. With a streak of wins and a bright new turquoise-blue car in my driveway, I was riding high.
CHAPTER 14
Saving Graces
“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change.”
—PAULO COELHO, WRITER
Chicago, July 27, 2013. By the time I got to floor exercise, I was so tired I could barely feel my legs. I knew what Aimee was going to say—that I hadn’t trained seriously enough in the weeks leading up to the US Secret Classic, and my exhaustion now was the result of poor preparation. I’d been mortified at how I’d performed on bars: One second I was flying backward over the high bar in a straddle Tkatchev, the next I was crashing onto my butt, looking up at the bar and wondering how I got there. I never missed the catch on my Tkatchev anymore, and yet today it had happened. The audience gasped as I fell, and I glimpsed Martha Karolyi on the sidelines, her face scrunched in a frown.
I jumped up immediately, remounted the bar, and performed a perfect Tkatchev on my next try. But the damage had been done. The best I could hope for was to turn in clean routines in all my other events. The problem was, instead of shaking off my disaster on bars, I was still feeling sorry for myself as I hopped up onto the balance beam. I was so distracted, I didn’t make a single one of my connections, and I wobbled through the routine like a bobblehead toy. At least I didn’t fall.
Next up was the floor. I started off well enough. But my lack of conditioning caught up with me on the final tumbling pass. I didn’t get enough height to pull off the full rotation in the air, and I came down short, pitching forward onto my knees and almost face-planting into the floor. I jumped right up and finished the event, but I knew I had no chance of medaling now. And that wasn’t the worst of it. On that last tumbling pass, I’d crunched my ankles on the landing, and now my right one was aching. But I didn’t tell anyone. I was furious at myself. This wasn’t how a senior on the national team was supposed to perform.
I started to head over to the vault, since that was immediately after my floor exercise. I was thinking, Okay, let’s just get this over with. But Aimee noticed me limping, slight as it was, and she took me off to the side.
“I’m pulling you from the meet,” Aimee said.
“What? No!” I protested.
&nbs
p; But my coach’s mind was made up. “Simone, you’re not mentally in the game,” Aimee said. “And you’re in danger of badly injuring yourself. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to let you do that. You’re out. That’s it.”
“Whatever,” I said, shrugging like I didn’t care. The brat in me popped out in full force.
As I walked away, I overheard another coach commenting to someone behind the stage curtain about my lackluster performance. “You know why you crashed?” he said. “Because she’s too fat, that’s why. How does she expect to compete like that? Maybe if she didn’t look like she’d swallowed a deer, she wouldn’t have fallen.”
I felt so humiliated by his words that tears came to my eyes. The confusing thing was, I weighed the same as I’d weighed in Italy and Germany when I won gold. So what the coach was saying didn’t make any sense to me. Still, I was crushed. In that moment, I felt wrong in just about every way I could possibly feel wrong.
Aimee came to get me then, because Martha wanted to talk to me. When I told her what I had overheard, she was annoyed. “You’re not fat,” she said as we walked over to meet with Martha. “Just put that out of your head. The problem is how you prepared, or rather how you didn’t prepare. We’ll talk about it later.”
If I’d escaped Martha’s displeasure before, I was in for it this time. She clucked her tongue and shook her head at me disapprovingly. “Simone,” she said, “you’re a senior now. This is your year to make a name for yourself, and look at how you went out there. You did that to yourself. This is what happens when you’re not one hundred percent focused and trained and ready to do what you need to do. So when you go back in the gym these next three-and-a-half weeks before Nationals, I want you to really focus, because if you’re having a hard time in practice, you can’t expect to just whip out your routines in competition.”