by Simone Biles
We all knew that the ten-day training camp we were about to attend would be beyond hard. “This just might be the toughest two weeks of my life,” I said to Aimee the next day. We were in her car, driving down the long, narrow, wooded road that led to the ranch. Aimee had been selected as the official coach of the USA women’s Olympic team the week before, which meant she’d be out on the floor with us in Rio and very involved in camp. But at the moment, as the familiar trees of the ranch brushed past her car windows, I was a little scared, if you want to know the truth. Five days at the ranch usually wore me out, and now we were facing ten days straight, after which we’d fly directly to Brazil without going back home.
“Aimee, we’re all going to die!” I joked as the training center came into view. I clutched my throat for dramatic effect. “Save us, please!”
“Yes, you will die,” my coach agreed, laughing. “And all of your hair will fall out too.”
Aimee and I were keeping things light, and I was glad that I’d get to see my family one more time before heading off to Rio. There would be an open house at the ranch a few days before we departed for Brazil. Our families were all invited to visit us in Huntsville to see how our training was going, and we’d have a chance to say our good-byes then.
Mom has always believed in setting clear goals. When she, my dad, and my sister Adria arrived at the ranch for the family open house the following week, she took me aside to discuss the fact that I still hadn’t written down any goals for my time in Rio.
“You said you wanted to make the team,” she pointed out, “but now that you’ve made it, you need to set a new goal for what comes next. You need to write it down and be very purposeful about it.”
“Mom,” I protested, “not now. I don’t want to think about that yet.”
“But the Olympics are almost here,” she said. “If you don’t think about it now, when will you have time? You have to get clear on what you want to accomplish in Rio before you get there.”
I put my arms around my mom, rested my forehead against hers, and groaned. All this talk of writing down goals was making me anxious. I still had several days of camp ahead of me, then another two weeks of practices in Brazil before podium training and the qualifying round.
“Just promise me this,” Mom finally said. “Promise that you’ll do your best. This is your dream, Simone, so go out there and live it with everything you’ve got. And don’t forget to have fun.”
I nodded, and we didn’t say anything more about goals for the rest of the day. I guess Mom decided to let me handle the mental preparation on my own. But after my family left the ranch that evening, I couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d said about me living my dream. For the rest of that week, in the back of my mind I was reflecting on what my true goals might be for my Olympic experience. Finally, on the day before our scheduled flight to Rio, I sat down in my cabin at the ranch, opened a notebook, and wrote my parents a short letter. We would all be sending our dirty clothes home in the suitcases we’d brought to camp, and we’d fold our sparkly new, custom-made red, white, and blue competition leos into two fresh suitcases provided by team sponsors. I planned to pack my notebook in the suitcase I was sending home, and I texted my sister Adria to ask her to make sure that Mom removed the notebook from the dirty laundry and read what I’d written. It was simply this:
Hi Mom and Dad,
I love you all.
See you soon in Rio.
I will make you proud.
Love, Simone. Kisses.
Mom told me later that when she read the words I will make you proud scrawled in my big, round handwriting in a notebook tucked between sweaty leos, she put her hand over her mouth and wept. She felt as if her prayers for me were being answered.
Our plane departed Houston on Tuesday night, July 26, 2016, at nine p.m. The eight of us tried to settle ourselves as passengers moving through the cabin stopped to take selfies with us. Ever since the Olympic Trials, people had started to recognize us. We were exhilarated to finally be on our way to Rio, but the long days of training had left us exhausted too. Once the plane door closed and the wheels lifted off the ground, we pulled blankets up to our chins and fell soundly asleep. I was knocked out right until the plane touched down in Brazil ten hours later. Then everything started moving at warp speed.
We got our credentials for the Olympic Village at the airport and took lots of press photos with the Rio mascot. Then we piled into a bus along with our coaches and trainers and drove almost an hour to the compound where the athletes would stay. We saw the tall buildings in the distance before we got to them, long rows of huge white apartment towers against a brilliant blue sky. At the gate, people came to help us with our bags and check us in at the Welcome Center. That’s when we learned that Ashton, MyKayla, and Ragan would be staying at another compound, with all the other team alternates. We hugged them quickly and said good-bye. After that, we saw them only when they came to watch us compete and cheer us on.
The Olympic Village was like an athlete’s fantasyland, with a pool and workout studios and a huge twenty-four-hour cafeteria with every style of food imaginable. There were Japanese, Brazilian, and Italian stations, as well as more Americanized choices such as pizza and burgers and pies, and healthier options, such as steamed chicken and fish with vegetables, or fruit and oatmeal—the kinds of foods we all knew we were supposed to eat, at least until the competition was over. I’d have to wait until I was back home to bite into a pizza slice.
The cafeteria is where we mingled with most of the other athletes, like Tom Daley, the British diver, and gymnast Arthur Nory Mariano, who I knew from international meets, and who the press kept calling my Brazilian boyfriend, even though we were just good friends. We also got to meet Simone Manuel, Michael Phelps, and Katie Ledecky from the US swimming team, and Novak Djokovic, the Serbian tennis player currently ranked number one in the world. We tried not to be too awestruck by all these stars, but one day a really tall, lean, muscular, dark-skinned man walked past our table with a small entourage. Aly and Gabby just about lost their minds.
“That’s Usain Bolt!” they screamed. “Get your phone, let’s take a picture!”
They jumped up so fast to get to him that they practically knocked our plates off the table, but one of the people with the Jamaican sprinter stopped them. “Not now,” he said. “He’s eating dinner.” Later, when we’d finished our own meal, we all walked by Usain’s table and apologized for disturbing him earlier, and he was super nice.
“We’re the gymnastics team,” we told him.
“I can tell,” he said, with a big smile. Everyone knew who we were because we were so much shorter than the other athletes. I felt like an ant trying to make sure I didn’t get stepped on.
Our apartment was in the American building; there were so many teams from the United States that we had an entire tower to ourselves. Our suite was on the third floor. When we walked in the first day, the whole space looked plain and a little unfinished. All the walls were white, the floor tiles were white, and in the living room were four green beanbag chairs, three standing fans, and nothing else. There were four bedrooms off of the living room, each of them with two twin beds and a dresser. Aly and Maddie were in one room, Laurie and I were in another room, and Gabby had a room to herself. Our trainer was in the fourth room. We mostly lived out of our suitcases because the dressers were tiny. And there were no mirrors anywhere, not in the bedrooms or even in the bathroom. So the next day, our coaches brought in five standing mirrors.
Outside the living room was a balcony that overlooked the pool area. We had some of our best times in Rio on that balcony. We’d just sit there, worn out after practice, talking and chilling in our beanbag chairs with our feet up on the railing. Sometimes we’d be glued to our phones, scrolling through our Twitter feeds, laughing at a video someone had shared, or posting stories on Snapchat and Instagram. Other times, we’d watch Modern Family on Netflix on my computer, or dance to music that Laurie would bl
ast from her playlist. We even posted a video of us singing along to Jake Miller’s “Overnight.” That was our jam.
From the balcony, we could watch the athletes from all over the world coming and going to the surrounding buildings, jogging along the footpaths, or doing laps in the pool. Everyone in the Olympic Village was constantly exercising, because we all had to be in the best shape of our lives. Martha made sure that none of us slacked off for even a single day. In fact, about an hour after we moved in on the first day, we were back on the bus, riding to the gymnastics training hall for our first workout in Rio.
Our daily regimen was just like at the ranch: workouts twice a day on all four apparatuses, with a lunch break and some downtime in between. We were all eager to start competition. We’d practiced and practiced for weeks, and now we wanted to get out there and show everyone what we could do. I remember when I walked out with the team for the qualification round, I heard my mom’s voice yelling, “Go, Simone!” I looked around the arena and found my family sitting over by the uneven bars. Once I located them in the crowd, even though I’d been slightly nervous before, I calmed right down. My mother, on the other hand, had been a bundle of jitters the night before while we were talking about the preliminaries on FaceTime. I had been the calm one then. “Mom,” I said, “Don’t worry about me. I’m ready.”
And I was.
We all did well in the qualifying round, with me, Aly, and Gabby placing first, second, and third overall. The fact was, our whole team was so rigorously prepared that any one of us could have competed in the all-around. Unfortunately, the Olympic rules state that only the top two qualifiers from any country are permitted to participate. I understand and respect the rules, but for our team, it was still kind of a bummer. Despite this, we were all so enthralled just to be at the Olympics. One of my favorite memories of the qualification round came during our first rotation, which was the floor exercise. Laurie went before me, and after she finished her routine, I walked over to her. “Hey, Laurie,” I said, “guess what? You’re now officially an Olympian.”
My roomie’s face lit up with a huge grin. And after my floor routine, when I came down off the stage, she came over and high-fived me, still smiling. “Hey, Simone,” she said, “guess what? You are now officially an Olympian.”
Two days later, on Tuesday, August 9, our team did exactly what we had been training for so many years to do: We performed almost flawless routines and won team gold. If the all-around win was considered to be the jewel in the crown, the team medal was the crown itself—the main reason we were there. On the podium afterward, feeling the heavy gold disc around my neck, I felt so privileged to be standing with my teammates. All I could think was, Wow, we did it. How long have I dreamed about this? We were so happy for each other and for ourselves, but our job was only half over. The all-around competition and the event finals were still to come. I wasn’t anywhere near finished trying to make my family and my country proud.
That afternoon, we told Martha that we’d named ourselves the Final Five as a tribute to her. When we explained how we’d all agreed on the name, she dabbed the corners of her eyes and said in her thick accent, “Oh my God, I love you guys even more now!” And she hugged us tightly. The rest of the afternoon and evening was a whirl of press interviews and photo ops, and then it was home to our little pod in the Olympic Village. We all fell right into bed, because we had to be up for our regular eight a.m. training the next morning. Before going to sleep, I carefully folded the green multicolored ribbon around my medal and put it at the bottom of my backpack. Later, they would give us sleek wooden cases to hold our medals, but for now, my makeshift storage would have to do.
“Can you believe we actually did it?” Laurie whispered, stifling a yawn before we drifted off. “We’re not just Olympians now; we’re gold medalists.”
I was too exhausted from happiness to answer, so I just smiled. But when I awoke the next morning, I wasn’t quite sure if the day before had all been a dream. I reached for my backpack and pulled out the medal, just to be sure. I unrolled the green ribbon and placed the gold disc in the palm of my hand, feeling its distinctive weight as I sent up a silent prayer of gratitude.
Thursday morning, the day of the Olympic all-around competition, dawned bright and clear. The apartment was silent when I opened my eyes. The rest of the girls except for Aly had already gone to breakfast. From there they would head to the training hall. Later, they would be in the gymnastics arena to see Aly and me battle it out with the best in the world for the coveted all-around title.
I went to find Aly. She was in her room and still in bed.
“I feel so good about today,” I told her.
“Me too,” she said, holding up one hand for a fist bump. “We’re so prepared. I have a really good feeling.”
My heart was galloping in my chest, but it wasn’t nerves; it was excitement. I could hardly wait to get into the arena. Aly and I each showered and then we did our hair and makeup together in the living room. We took our time because the competition wouldn’t begin until the early afternoon. I outlined my eyes in gold glitter and chose a nude lipstick instead of a bold one. The eye makeup, with my usual winged corners, was dramatic enough, and my sparkly leo would complete the effect. The night before, we’d chosen the leos we wanted to wear and laid them out on our beanbag chairs. Aly had opted for the shiny red with lines of crystals fanning out from the neckline like bursts of sunlight, while I’d selected a superpatriotic number with sheer white crystal-studded sleeves, and dazzling red-and-white stripes running from the shoulders down both sides, framing a high-sheen blue fabric dotted with glittering stars. I’d saved this leotard, my favorite, for the all-around. I hoped its shimmer would help me win gold.
I was already feeling incredibly happy to be sharing this day with Aly, who was such a rock-solid competitor and friend. As we walked to the bus that would take us to the arena, we held hands like schoolgirls and bobbed our heads to the music coming through our headphones. Every so often we’d hug each other and say, “You’re good. You’ve worked so hard. You deserve to be here. You’ve got this.” And then we’d say, “I love you so much. I love you, no matter what. Today will be a good day.”
Our warm-up in the training hall went without a hitch or a fall, and then it was showtime. Before we walked out to compete, we always used the bathroom just in case. As I washed my hands and stared at my face in the mirror, my stomach was suddenly doing somersaults. I plopped down on a bench that was just outside the bathroom and tried to pull myself together. A few moments later, Aly walked out and sat down beside me. When she leaned her head back against the wall, I noticed she looked really pale.
“Are you okay?” I said.
She shook her head from left to right.
“Are you okay?” she asked me.
“No,” I said. “I feel like I’m going to throw up.”
The two of us sat there for several minutes, breathing slowly and trying to settle ourselves down.
“We’re okay,” I said after a while.
“We’ve got this,” Aly said.
“We can do this.”
“We’ve done this so many times.”
“I love you, Aly.”
“I love you, Simone.”
“Let’s go.”
We did another fist bump and walked out onto the arena floor. Both Aly and I were in the same group as the top contenders from Russia, China, and Brazil. As the announcer introduced us to the audience, we stepped forward and waved. Then, as I’d done in every meet ever since I was a pint-sized JO competitor, I listened for my mother’s voice. “You’ve got this, Simone!” she called from somewhere over by the uneven bars. Her words were almost drowned out by the rest of my family members, who were screaming just as loudly. In fact, the whole auditorium was going crazy, which was a good thing. It’s way more nerve-wracking for gymnasts to perform our death-defying routines against a backdrop of silence. I loved the roar of a fully engaged audience, and the crowd i
n Brazil was one of the best.
Our first rotation was vault. By the time I stepped onto the mat, my queasiness had subsided. Okay, Simone, just like practice, I thought, remembering the mantra Kyla Ross had given me at my first major assignment three years before. At the flag, I smiled and saluted the judges, adjusted my starting position, and took off sprinting down the runway. I could feel that my form was nearly perfect as I pushed off the vault table. I spun twice around in the air, my body fully extended, and added another half twist before landing. But so much adrenaline was pumping through me that I needed a step to balance myself as my feet touched the mat. I’d known as soon as I punched off the vault that I was soaring too far out and wasn’t going to stick the landing. I was annoyed with myself as I stepped off the mat to meet Aimee. She wasn’t worried.
“It was a good Amanar,” she assured me. She slipped an arm around my shoulders as we squinted up at the Jumbotron, waiting for the score. It turned out that I’d executed well enough to earn a score of 15.866, which put me in first place, about a point ahead of Aly, who’d also performed a strong Amanar.
Next up: the uneven bars. As I walked up to the low bar, getting ready to mount and swing myself up to the high bar, I was sure I heard my mother’s distinctive Belizean accent: “Make it count, Simone!” A moment later, I was flying higher on my Tkatchev than I ever had. I caught the high bar firmly on my way back around and glided seamlessly into the Pak salto. Every skill flowed effortlessly into the next one, and I stuck the dismount as if my feet were glued to the mat. I was smiling as I came down from the apparatus, confident that I’d delivered.