Let us begin with the person behind the medals. Here is where her story starts. Simone Biles was born on March 14, 1997, in Columbus, Ohio, and she is from Spring, Texas, which is a suburb north of Houston. At age 6, she first tried gymnastics, on a field trip with her day-care group. As a child, she trained at Bannon's Gymnastics. She is 4 feet 8 inches tall, which is 142 centimeters.
Now let us look at her sport, one event at a time. Here is what we need to know. Women's artistic gymnastics has four events. They are vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise. In each event, a gymnast performs a routine, and each routine gets two scores added together. One is for difficulty, and one is for execution. Judges take points off for mistakes, such as a step on a landing or a fall.
Let us see how the two scores work, one at a time. The execution score of a routine starts at 10.0 points, and judges take points off for each visible error. The difficulty score starts at zero and goes up as harder skills are added. Scoring has changed over time. Before 2006, the highest possible score in gymnastics was a perfect 10. The newer scoring system removed the perfect 10.
Now let us look at her Olympic Games. Here is what happened there. Simone has competed at three of them, in 2016, 2020 and 2024. At the 2016 Olympics in Rio, she won four gold medals. Her first Olympic gold came in the team event, on August 9. She also won gold on the floor exercise and on the vault.
Then came the 2024 Olympics in Paris. Here is what she did there. Simone helped the U.S. team win the team gold medal. She won three gold medals and one silver medal in all, and the silver came on the floor exercise. As of November 2026, she has won 11 Olympic medals, and 7 of them are gold. She is tied for second-most decorated female gymnast in Olympic history.
Simone has also won medals at the World Championships. Here is the count. As of November 2026, she has won 30 of them. Twenty-three are gold, 4 are silver and 3 are bronze.
Words to know
- routine: planned performance
- difficulty: how hard
- execution: how well done
- bronze: third prize
