Let us start with the person, and see how her story began. Simone Biles was born on March 14, 1997, in Columbus, Ohio, and she is from Spring, Texas, a suburb north of Houston. She first tried gymnastics at age 6, on a field trip with her day-care group. As a child, she trained at Bannon's Gymnastics. At age eight, she began training with coach Aimee Boorman. She started her elite gymnastics career at age 14, on July 1, 2011. She is 4 feet 8 inches tall.
Now let us turn to the sport itself, and to the group that runs it. Gymnastics has an international governing body, the FIG. It was founded in 1881 and still runs international gymnastics. Scoring at that level follows its Code of Points. Women's artistic gymnastics has four events: vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise. Each routine gets two scores added together, one for difficulty and one for execution. The execution score starts at 10.0 points, and judges take points off for mistakes such as a step on a landing or a fall.
Each of the four events uses its own apparatus. The vault is both an event and the main piece of equipment used in that event, and it is the only apparatus that has a predetermined difficulty score. The uneven bars are two horizontal bars set at different heights. On them, gymnasts perform swings, pirouettes, transition moves between the bars, and releases. The balance beam is 4 feet high, 16 feet long and only 3.9 inches wide. Routines on it run from 70 to 90 seconds. The women's floor exercise is a 90-second choreographed routine performed to instrumental music. It is done on a carpeted square that is 12 meters by 12 meters, or 39 feet by 39 feet.
Let us see how a skill gets its name, and what makes a routine hard. The difficulty score of a routine starts at zero and goes up as harder skills are added. Women's routines count only the eight most difficult skills in the difficulty score. A new skill takes its name from the first gymnast who performs it successfully at an official FIG event. Gymnastics moves have been named after Simone Biles. As of November 2026, she has five skills named after her: two on floor exercise, two on vault and one on balance beam.
Last, let us look at her Olympic Games. Simone has competed at three of them: 2016, 2020 and 2024. At the 2016 Olympics, she won four gold medals and also won a bronze medal on the balance beam. At the 2024 Olympics, she won three gold medals and one silver medal. At age 27, she became the second-oldest woman to win the Olympic all-around gold medal. As of November 2026, she has won 11 Olympic medals, and 7 of them are gold. She is also the most decorated gymnast on balance beam of all time, with four gold and four bronze medals.
Words to know
- apparatus: gym equipment
- pirouettes: spinning turns
- choreographed: planned dance
- routine: planned performance
