Our Amazing Journey

Simone Biles and her teammates overcame mental and physical challenges to become champions and take home Olympic gold!

Her words hurt. After the 2024 Olympic women’s gymnastics team was announced, retired gymnast MyKayla Skinner — a vault silver medalist at the Tokyo Games in 2021 — criticized four of the five athletes chosen to represent America in Paris. “Besides Simone [Biles], I feel like the talent and the depth just isn’t what it used to be,” MyKayla, 27, said in a since-deleted YouTube video. “The girls just don’t have the work ethic.” Days later, she apologized.

Simone didn’t forget, though. On July 30, she, fellow Tokyo veterans Suni Lee, 21, Jordan Chiles, 23, and Jade Carey, 24, and newcomer Hezly Rivera, 16, won gold in the team final — and Simone clapped back on social media, pointedly captioning a triumphant photo with her teammates, “lack of talent, lazy, Olympic champions.”

All five have suffered on their journey to this remarkable moment, overcoming mental issues, health problems and disappointing performances. Yet they persevered to complete what Simone’s called their “redemption tour” following the U.S. team’s second-place finish at the last Summer Games. “We all had something to prove,” Simone said, “and tonight we did just that.”

CALL IT A COMEBACK

Three years ago in Tokyo, Simone was under immense pressure. After developing a case of the “twisties” — when a gymnast suffers a dangerous loss of spatial awareness while in the air — she withdrew from most events, telling her teammates she was battling internal “demons.” The sports star now understands that part of her mental struggle stemmed from isolation during the pandemic and unresolved trauma from abuse she suffered at the hands of Larry Nassar, a physician who sexually assaulted hundreds of athletes. “I never pictured going to another Olympic Games,” she confessed.