Staying in her bubble

Despite plenty of spotlight cast on her, teen Biles has managed to remain calm and emerge champion

To understand the mindset of Simone Biles in the days leading up to her victory in the Olympic gymnastics all-around last Thursday, consider a recent video chat she had with her mother, Nellie.

Nellie Biles was crying a mother’s tears. Couldn’t help it. After all, she was nervous that Simone’s big Olympic moment was finally upon them. It was the culmination of all these years, 13 of them, of hard work and home schooling and driving to and from practices, and joy and frustrations — as well as expectations from the public. She told Simone what she had repeated again and again: “Stay in your bubble.” Simone needed only to do her best, and that would be enough.

Simone stopped her.

“Mom,” she said, “I’m ready.”

It was an example of what makes Simone Biles a gymnastics wonder woman, the kind of gymnast who comes along once in a generation, and most likely the best female gymnast ever.

Last Thursday, she became the fourth straight US woman to win the Olympic all-around. On her way to the top of the podium — where she stood next to her fellow American Aly Raisman, who won the silver, and the Russian Aliya Mustafina, who won bronze — Biles finished first in three of the four events.

Afterward, Biles made a point to remind reporters that, yes, she really is human. Really, she is.

“It doesn’t even feel real to me,” she said after winning her second gold medal of these Olympics.

The first came in last Tuesday’s team event, where she anchored the team in a contest that was no contest at all because the Americans were so dominant.

“I’m just the same Simone,” she said, smiling. “I just have two Olympic gold medals now. I feel the same. I just feel like I did my job today.”

That’s one way to look at it. A crazy way. Although she said she wasn’t nervous, the pressure on her to win the gold medal was immense.

Biles, 19, came into these Olympics as a near lock to win the all-around. She has won the past three world championships in the all-around, and the spotlight on her has been so bright for the past year or so that it could have blinded a lesser athlete.

Going into these Olympics, she made the cover of magazines, including Time and Sports Illustrated. During these Olympics, Zac Efron and Kim Kardashian sent her shout-outs on Twitter, which made her scream with delight. After all, she does have a life-size cutout of Efron in the corner of her purple bedroom back in Spring, Texas. She and her sister Adria are also devotees of Kardashian’s TV show.

But Simone just stayed in her bubble, as her mother had told her. She listened to the possibility that she could leave these Olympics with five gold medals but didn’t let it shake her. Her coach, Aimee Boorman, said Biles was “nervous-excited but didn’t seem tense,” when Thursday’s competition began.

So Biles walked onto the competition floor and just did her thing. She was, to say it simply, just Simone.

She started on the vault, launching her 4-foot-9 body higher and farther than imaginable, twisting and flipping like a human gyroscope. She scored 15.866 points and was in first place. The next rotation was the uneven bars, her worst event. Her 14.966 score dropped her to second, behind Mustafina. Biles saw the scoreboard and shrugged.
Balance beam was next. Biles just wanted to get it over with.

“We were a mess and were trying to keep it together,” Boorman said. “Then we went to the floor, we were like, ‘Let’s go play.'”

Biles moved back into first after the balance beam. On the floor exercise, she was the final gymnast to perform. The world champion in the event, she shimmied and knocked out her tumbling passes, including one called the Biles — two flips and a half twist, where she lands blind — and soon began to smile.

Early on, Biles said she didn’t want to think about the Olympics, even though this was the Olympics.

“If you think about it, your brain is going to fall out, and you’re going to freak out,” she said.

But it was time to start thinking about it. How could she not? She already had seen Raisman begin to weep after finishing her floor routine. Raisman, the team captain, had finished fourth in the all-around four years ago at the London Games, in a tiebreaker. This was Raisman’s time, finally, to make the podium.

Biles said she was hoping that Raisman’s tears wouldn’t make her cry, too. She was happy when she kept her emotions in check.

Even though this was the Olympics, she said this wasn’t as stressful as it was at last year’s world championships, where she wanted to win her third all-around title in a row — because no female gymnast ever had.

But this was the Olympics. It was different.

There were her parents, Nellie and Ron, in the grandstands. They are her grandparents and adopted her and Adria when Simone was just 6. The girls’ mother had a drug and alcohol problem, so they couldn’t live with her anymore. And there were the 17 family members in total who came to watch her compete.

And there was her mother, crying, as usual, as Simone Biles was announced as the Olympic champion.

So as the national anthem played, Biles looked at the US flag rising to the rafters of the Rio Olympic arena, and tears began to fall from her glitter-rimmed eyes.

It was over, and she had done it. The goal of becoming an Olympic champion that she had written in her journal, year after year, for so many years, had finally come true.
Yes, Mom, she was ready.

She showed everyone she was ready.