Simone Biles (eBook)

On 11th August, 2016, a young gymnast took her starting position on the floor in the individual women’s all-around final at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The crowd knew they were about to see something special. The spectators were witnessing history being made. Before them was then three-time world and four-time national all-around champion Simone Biles. The four-foot-eight-inch nineteen-year-old from Spring, Texas, was ninety seconds away from her dream of winning gold coming true.

For a women’s artistic gymnast, a medal in the all-around competition is the most highly prized of all the six events in the Olympic Games. Only the two highest-scoring gymnasts from each national team are allowed to take part. Simone was on a winning streak, unbeaten in all-around competition since 2013, and she was determined to win again.

Simone had nailed her floor routine in practice countless times, but no matter how often she and her teammates told each other that it was “just like practice” to calm their nerves, pulling off the routine in a competition was different.

Women’s physical strength and competitive spirit have not always been celebrated. Throughout history, many people believed that being strong and competitive was something only men should aim for. At the turn of the twentieth century, attitudes began to change. As women started to take part in sports, the demand for opportunities to compete increased. Women’s events were added to the Olympic Games in 1900; women could compete in tennis, sailing, croquet, golf and horseback riding.

Around this time, artistic gymnastics grew in popularity. Women saw the activity as a way to keep fit and healthy, and practised it in social clubs in Europe and the United States. It was also introduced in some schools. The term artistic was originally used to differentiate its moves from exercises used by the military. Now there are other types of gymnastics, including rhythmic, where gymnasts use equipment such as a ribbon, a hoop or a ball as part of their routines.

Women’s artistic gymnastics was introduced at the 1928 Olympic Games, held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The competition didn’t look very much like the one Simone Biles would dominate almost ninety years later. While men competed in seven gymnastics events, women were permitted to take part in just one – the team competition.

In this event, sixty women were divided into five national teams. They competed in three events – drill, apparatuses and jumps, with the scores across all these events contributing to their final result. Women performed together and were judged for grace, balance and teamwork rather than for their individual performances. Instead of the formfitting leotards gymnasts compete in today, women gymnasts at the 1928 Games wore baggy shorts and shirts. The Netherlands brought home the first women’s artistic gymnastics gold medal.

The United States sent its first women’s team to the Olympic Games in 1948. The US women took silver in the team event, which was still the only gymnastics competition women were allowed to take part in.

The women’s artistic gymnastics competition didn’t start to resemble today’s until the 1952 games in Helsinki, Finland, when women competed in seven events: individual all-around, team all-around, balance beam, floor exercise, uneven bars, vault and team portable apparatus (similar to today’s Olympic rhythmic gymnastics competition). From small beginnings, women’s artistic gymnastics has grown to be one of the most watched sports in the Summer Olympic Games.

The crowd was with Simone from the moment she began her 2016 Olympic floor routine. They clapped along to the rhythmic samba music and cheered as she stuck the landing of each difficult tumbling pass.

Simone smiled at the crowd – she was working hard but she was also having fun. Gymnastics was her passion and had been since the first time she set foot in a gym at six years old.

After Simone’s strong performance on the other apparatuses, she needed to score only 13.833 on the floor exercise to take home gold – a relatively easy feat for her. But just as in practice, Simone was determined to do more than was asked of her. As she put it, “If they said ‘Do five pull-ups’, I would always want to do ten.”

When Simone’s routine ended, the crowd exploded in applause. Simone waved to the audience and ran into the waiting arms of her coach, Aimee Boorman, and teammate Alexandra “Aly” Raisman. Out of a maximum possible score of 16.800, Simone got a massive 15.933! It was more than enough to win her the gold medal and her place in the history books, while Aly took silver.

Simone had proven, yet again, that she was a gymnast unlike any other. The average margin of victory in the individual all-around competition since 1972 is 0.2 points. Simone’s final score was more than two full points higher than Aly’s and almost four points higher than bronze-medal winner Aliya Mustafina’s score. Simone hadn’t just won; she had eclipsed the competition.

Her floor routine would have been impossible for almost any other gymnast in history to perform.