It’s impossible not to be impressed by Simone Biles, whether hearing about the tough moments she’s faced while competing, or watching one of the many awe-inspiring scenes in her Netflix documentary series Simone Biles Rising. We’ve been excited to watch the talented athlete compete in the 2024 Olympics.
Biles has definitely done a lot in her life considering that she’s only 27 years old, from building her absolutely amazing career, to marrying Jonathan Owens. We know that she’s been practicing gymnastics for a long time. But did the beloved gymnast realize how much she loved this beautiful and challenging sport when she was a little kid? Or did she begin training later on?
When did Simone Biles become a gymnast?
Simone Biles began practicing gymnastics when she was six, according to Essentially Sports. She put in some serious hours when she was just a kid, and her training included time at Bannon’s Gymnastix, which is located in Houston. Now she is an Olympic athlete, and it’s all thanks to a field trip she went on that happened to be at a gymnastics center. While she was super young, she had fun watching the gymnasts and moving her body.
Biles talked more about what it was like as a hugely gifted child gymnast. According to People, she was in foster care and when she was six, her grandparents Nellie and Ronald Biles adopted her. She said the sport was new to her and “I was just like, ‘oh, I bet I could do that!” She shared even more in a piece she wrote for CNN, and said that she was grateful that people “saw that I had a gift for gymnastics” although at the time, she was little, and wasn’t quite aware that she was so talented at it.
But while many kids love gymnastics or dance and take classes after school, Biles’ talent was so extraordinary that everyone had to take notice. According to The Guardian, she began going to a gym as a kid, where it became clear that her upper body was particularly powerful:
“I was just another little kid on the block who used to run and jump around,” says Biles. Soon after joining the gym, a coach observed Biles do a “seat drop” – a bounce from a sitting position back on to her feet, as if the floor were a trampoline, which six-year-olds shouldn’t be able to do. Biles’ upper body strength was so unusual, meanwhile, that while other kids flailed a few feet off the floor, she shot up a rope to the ceiling until everyone yelled at her to come down.
While Biles is 27 and, of course, still young (many people don’t even know what they want to do at 27), she seems to have become more aware of her age over the past few years. In 2021, she told NBC that “whenever I was younger, I was pretty fearless” and “But now I’m just like, ‘Okay, I’m getting older. This could go wrong.'”
When we learn elite, world-class athletes’ backstories like Simone Biles’, they often focus on the immense training in childhood and as teenagers, which often made it hard for them to live a more regular life. But, of course, they wouldn’t give up the hours of early-morning practice or constant competition. Now that Biles is older, though, she seems to have found a balance between following her athletic dreams, and making sure she has a happy personal life. It just takes one look at her Instagram to see her beaming smile, whether she’s practicing, or on vacation with her husband. We can definitely catch glimpses of that phenomenally talented six-year-old who tackled the seemingly impossible.