by Simone Biles
Still, I knew I wanted to go with Aimee. She’d always helped me keep everything in perspective. For example, unlike some other coaches I’d heard about, Aimee didn’t try to control my eating and she wasn’t focused on my weight; she just counseled me to eat healthily and to always listen to what my body was telling me it needed. She knew my parents cooked nutritious food at home anyway. Aimee also never made me feel as if the world would stop spinning if I made a mistake in competition. In fact, if I messed up, I was much harder on myself than she ever was. That’s because she truly believed the only reason to work hard at gymnastics was for the love of the sport. Even now, when the competition stakes were becoming so much higher, she still encouraged me to train with dedication, then go out there and have fun. That was exactly the balance I needed.
At the time, Mom and her partners in the nursing homes were negotiating to sell the business, which was thriving. My mom and dad agreed that with the money from the sale, they’d be able to build a world-class gymnastics-training center from scratch. The next weekend, when my godparents, Uncle Paul and Aunt Judy, came over to our house, my dad said, “My wife says we’re building a gym.” Everybody had a good laugh, even my mom. I don’t think my parents understood yet the challenge they were taking on.
It’s good that my dad was on board with my mom’s wild idea, because it took a while for her to find a purchaser for her nursing homes. While she continued to manage that business until it finally sold, my dad was meeting with architects and contractors daily. “I had no idea how complicated this whole process would be,” Mom says now. “It wasn’t anything like the nursing home business, where we’d look at an existing building and negotiate to buy and then renovate based on what was already there. Building our own gym was way more involved. Suddenly, Ron and I were dealing with city inspectors and county zoning laws; engineers and land surveyors; drainage issues and blueprints and clearing trees and commercial licenses. I cannot tell you how many times I said to my husband, ‘If I’d known what we were getting into, we would never have done this.’ ”
But now they were committed. And if there is one thing everyone knows about my parents, it’s that once they put their hearts and minds to something, they never quit.
The World Champions Centre (WCC) in Spring would take more than two years to complete. My parents envisioned it as a family-friendly facility that would offer training in everything from tumbling and taekwondo to dance and cheerleading, ninja warrior, kickboxing, trampoline classes, and competitive gymnastics through the elite level—all in an airy, 52,000-square-foot climate-controlled gym with forty-foot-high ceilings. There would be a giant foam pit, huge helicopter fans, a fitness center for parents, an upstairs viewing area with comfy armchairs, Wi-Fi everywhere, an apparel and accessories store, a café with healthy snacks, physical therapy and rehab rooms, and even a dedicated homeschool classroom with a teacher permanently on staff. And my dad made sure the architects included rows of large windows on every side, allowing sunlight to pour down on us as we practiced.
I didn’t take all that natural light for granted because, before we were able to move into our beautiful, spacious, light-filled training center in 2015, Adria and I had been working out in a dingy warehouse over by the railway tracks. But I’m getting ahead of the story.
Right after Aimee left Bannon’s, my parents leased space at a gym called AIM, which stands for Athletes in Motion. Adria and I, and four other gymnasts who decided to follow Aimee, trained there for about six months. One of the other coaches from Bannon’s, Selinda, also moved with us, so we made up our own little team of eight athletes and two coaches. But it was awkward trying to run our start-up WCC program in the middle of someone else’s business. We always had to be aware of not getting in the other team’s way, and if we invited people to join our team, instead of AIM’s, it got a little weird.
I remember feeling unsettled during that transition, because around that time I’d injured my shoulder and had to sit out the first half of the 2014 competition season. My shoulder had given out on me at Nationals Camp that spring. As one of our exercises at the ranch, we had to hold a handstand for one full minute. I was in the middle of doing that when suddenly my shoulder popped out and I crashed onto my head. Scary stuff. For six months after that, all I did was go to therapy three times a week and do light conditioning that didn’t involve the shoulder. I still went to the gym every day, but I didn’t touch the uneven bars.
To make matters worse, my parents had thought construction of their World Champions Centre would be farther along by the time our six-month lease with AIM was up in September. They were quickly realizing that building a state-of-the-art facility was going to take a lot longer than they’d imagined. They didn’t want to keep subleasing from other gyms, so they began looking for a space where they could set up their own temporary training center.
One day when my mom was driving around, she saw a warehouse across the railroad tracks. She decided to investigate and discovered a car-painting shop on one side of the property and several empty warehouse bays with roll-front gates on the other. She and my dad ended up signing a one-year lease for two warehouse bays that made up a total of 9,000 square feet. They had a hole cut in the wall between the two adjoining warehouses so we could easily get from one side to the other. Then my parents and Aimee began turning the warehouse into a gym, painting all the walls and cleaning the place and bringing in top-of-the-line equipment. They also installed industrial-sized fans, but that did almost nothing to ease the heat and humidity inside the bays. The coaches were afraid we’d perspire and slip on the equipment, so even though we didn’t own the warehouse space, my parents paid to install air-conditioning throughout. Safety first.
No matter how much sprucing up we did, that warehouse was not pretty. There were always cobwebs high up in the ceiling that we couldn’t get to, and the rows of skylights way up above us were grimy and gray, so the gym always seemed dark. Everyone began referring to the space as the Warehouse, even the parents of the kids who trained there. The thing is, even though the building was ugly, we actually had good equipment to train on and great coaches. My mom had hired two more coaches by then, and soon more families began signing up their kids for our programs. When we first moved to the Warehouse, we had eight gymnasts, including Adria and me. By the time the spanking-new WCC building was completed fourteen months later, we had two hundred clients, from preschool tumblers to elite-level athletes.
My parents had been concerned that all the moving around would disrupt my training routine, especially when I had to get back into competitive shape after my shoulder injury healed. It didn’t help that Aimee wasn’t out on the floor coaching as much as she used to be. During the six months I’d been taking care of my shoulder, she’d been running the entire gymnastics program at the Warehouse—including all the compulsory and optional JO levels. That often kept her holed up in the office taking care of a mountain of paperwork.
When I finally returned to training full time, Aimee trusted the other coaches, Terry and Tamara, to give me what I needed when she wasn’t there, and for the most part, they did. But what she didn’t realize was that I’d left Bannon’s because it was her coaching style that made the difference for me. I’d grown up with Aimee. I’d traveled the world with her. She felt like a dependable big sister who didn’t take any mess and always gave it to me straight. I missed her.
One day, when I was being a little sulky during practice, Aimee came over to me. “What’s going on?” she asked me, and to her surprise, I broke down. “You’re never out here!” I burst out. “You never coach me anymore! You’re just always in the office! You don’t even care!”
Aimee look startled, and then her face crumpled. I was instantly sorry about what I’d said. “Oh, Simone, I’m so sorry,” she said, hugging me. “I’m right here. I haven’t gone anywhere. I’m always right here.”
Even now, when Aimee talks about that day, her voice quivers. After that, she got someone else to take
over most of the office paperwork (it wasn’t what she wanted to be doing anyway), and she began actively coaching me again.
Just three months later, in August 2014, Aimee was with me when I won the all-around title at the P&G National Championships in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, becoming the US Champion for the second year in a row. I also took gold on vault and floor and tied for silver on beam with Alyssa Baumann. Afterward, I was once again chosen for the national team and selected to compete on behalf of my country at the World Championships, which would be held in Nanning, China, in October. My second time at Worlds would be a way more stressful one. Let me explain.
After every Olympics, a lot of gymnasts take time off, and others retire completely, which means that some countries can’t field a full team the following year. That’s why the first World Championships after an Olympic year is always an individual meet with no team competition. At my second Worlds, the setup would be different because this was both a team and an individual competition. We all understood that the team medal was the most important one, which meant that if I made a mistake, I wouldn’t only be jeopardizing my own chances, I’d also be letting down my teammates and maybe even putting a team win at risk.
It turns out I was worried for no reason. In October, Team USA took top honors in the women’s artistic competition, and I won my second all-around World Championship title. I also earned gold on beam and floor and silver on vault. I didn’t make the event final for bars, because I’d downgraded the difficulty of my routine; I’d taken out one of my Tkatchevs so I could go easy on my shoulder. But I was happy with how bars had gone anyway: Even though my D score (degree of difficulty) was low, my E score (execution) had been the highest one on my team. Coming back from a shoulder injury, I’d managed to turn in a polished performance on bars, my nemesis. I’d take it.
Later that evening, as I waited with the other winners to be called to the podium for the medal ceremony, I thought about all the upheaval and change I’d just been through. I’d begun the year by leaving the only gym I’d ever known. I’d sat out the first half of the competition season with a shoulder injury, and when I was finally healed from that (good old St. Sebastian!), I’d had to train in an old, dark, cobwebby warehouse. “This has truly been a walk of faith,” my mom had said to me just before I left for Nanning. And she was right. What a difference a year makes, especially when you can count on loved ones to lift you up and God to pull you through.
Right then, an announcer called the winners to the floor. Feeling grateful and happy to be among them for a second year in a row, I climbed onto the first-place podium to accept my medal and the ceremonial bouquet of flowers. As the music of “The Star Spangled Banner” filled the arena, I had no idea that what happened next would become a hilarious part of my Worlds story.
CHAPTER 17
Staying Grounded
“No great thing is suddenly created.”
—EPICTETUS, PHILOSOPHER
It became known as “the bee incident”—my battle of the buzz that went viral in a matter of hours. In practically every account of the 2014 World Championship in Nanning, there was some mention of the bee that climbed out of my bouquet of flowers as I stood on the gold medal podium.
During that ceremony, silver medalist Larisa Iordache of Romania stood on one side of me, and Kyla Ross, who’d won bronze, was on the other. Larisa saw the bee first. When the three of us turned to face our country’s flags as the American national anthem played, I’d placed one hand over my heart and held my bouquet behind me with the other hand. All through “The Star Spangled Banner,” Larisa watched the bee crawling over my flowers. When the music stopped and we faced forward again, Larisa leaned over to me and pointed.
What is she pointing at?
“Simone,” she said, “look, there’s a bee.”
I saw the tiny thing just as it lifted its wings and tried to land on my hand. Suddenly frantic, I held the flowers as far away from me as I could and began shaking the bouquet, hoping to dislodge the bee. I fought against my instinct to toss the flowers onto the floor. I knew no one but Larisa, Kyla, and me could see the insect, and I didn’t want anyone to think I was being disrespectful.
Then the bee launched itself right at my head! I jumped down off the podium and tried to dodge and duck, but the buzzing thing just kept following me. I ran one way and then the other, but the bee was still with me. When it dived back into my flowers, I finally threw the bouquet on the ground, hoping I wasn’t insulting our host nation. By this time Kyla and Larisa were giggling nervously, and I can only imagine what the audience must have thought at the sight of me running in circles behind the podium.
A moment later, the bee flew out of my flowers again, and I carefully retrieved the bouquet. But now the silly thing landed on Kyla’s flowers. With great composure—much more than I’d shown—Kyla laid her bouquet delicately at the edge of her podium and climbed onto my podium with me. Larisa jumped up onto the podium to join us, and the three of us, realizing just how crazy the episode must have looked, burst out in laughter. The whole time photographers were snapping away, and TV cameras were pointed at us, so we finally got it together and straightened up to pose for the winners’ picture. In the photograph, Kyla is not holding a bouquet.
The video of the bee incident was everywhere the next day. My mom called my brother Ron from China to complain that I’d ruined my special moment with what she called “typical Simone antics.” She said she and my dad had been feeling so proud and emotional, watching from the audience as I received my second World Championship all-around gold, and then suddenly I was jumping down from the podium and hopping around like a maniac.
Ron, who’d watched the bee chase on TV and laughed till his sides hurt, helped Mom feel better about the whole thing. “That’s Simone for you,” he told her. “She’s just always been a goofy and down-to-earth kid. And you know what, it might actually be good for people to see who she is. What you see is what you get with Simone.”
I loved that Ron said that about me, because I really did try to be myself. And that included not taking myself and even my gymnastics too seriously. When I’d fallen into that trap before, at the US Secret Classic in 2013, the results had been disastrous. Now I knew to take each day as it came and to do my best. I tried to stay conscious of how incredible it was to be traveling the world with some of my best friends, having adventures together, and knowing that on any given day any one of us might come up with the win.
Martha Karolyi wasn’t always such a big fan of me being Simone, though. I remember when I did my first few assignments as a brand-new national team member, I’d congratulate the other girls after their routines. I was just being friendly. As I got to know some of the international competitors better, I’d hug them when they came down from the mat or high-five them and say something like, “You did great!” or “Awesome job!”
Martha took me aside. “Simone, what are you doing?” she said. “You can’t go around talking to everybody and cheering and waving like that. It’s not how we operate. You have to stay serious and focused here. Just concentrate on your own routine.”
I realized that Martha thought me being so social with the other girls meant that I wasn’t staying mentally in my zone. But over time she began to understand that what she saw as a distraction was actually good for me. If I focused too hard on my upcoming routine, I’d start to get all nervous and tense. It was better for me to think of competition as an extension of what I did in practice every day. I had to trust that my body knew what to do.
As Ron would remind me in the pep talks he sometimes gave me before meets, “Simone, you do this for six hours every day, six days a week. You’ve got this. Don’t let nerves get to you. Think of it as just another day, another competition, and go out there and enjoy yourself. You’ve walked your journey, and this is your moment. Embrace it. Just leave it all out there on the floor, and see what happens.”
What happened was that Martha eventually decided that since I was
winning, she’d just let me be myself. She stopped trying to contain my natural friendliness, and over time the rest of the team relaxed a bit more as well. That’s because Martha no longer insisted that everyone be so stern-faced on the sidelines. She made her peace with the slightly looser vibe among all the girls on the team, because she saw that it wasn’t hurting us.
That didn’t mean Martha went any easier on us in training.
Not one bit.
In September 2015, I traveled with the seven-member US women’s team to compete at Worlds for my third year in a row. The meet was in Glasgow, Scotland, this time, and we got there a week early to allow our bodies to adjust to the time difference. The last thing Martha needed was a bunch of bleary-eyed, jet-lagged girls on a four-inch-wide beam.
All year, people had been tweeting me, Three-peat, three-peat, three-peat. Everyone was telling me I could make history by winning Worlds a third consecutive time. Not only would I be the first American woman to do that, but if I delivered strong performances in the event finals, I could also become the most decorated American gymnast in Worlds history. As astonishing as that was for me to think about, since winning Nationals in 2013 I hadn’t lost a single meet in which I’d competed in all four events. I was the three-time US national champion and the two-time World Champion, which meant people’s expectations of me in Glasgow were sky high.
I was used to that sort of pressure by now. Or at least I thought I was. My usual way of dealing with it was to put it out of my mind and focus on getting good workouts. But in Glasgow, leading up to the meet, our training days were so rigorous and long that I began to feel exhausted. Maggie Nichols and I were rooming together, and she admitted to feeling worn out as well. We weren’t the only ones. All the girls seemed fatigued, but no one dared to complain. That would have made us appear weak and unprepared, and might even get us pulled from the rotation.