Simone Biles Has Forever Changed Gymnastics—And How Athletes Talk About Mental Health
2025-05-01T15:44:33Z
Simone Biles took two years off from competing before starting to train again for the Paris Olympics—but this time on very different terms.
After you’ve competed in gymnastics for nearly every year of your life, and earned more world and Olympic medals than any other gymnast in history, what do you do? “My life is easy, it’s chill, and I’m not mad about it,” says Simone Biles, who competed in her third Olympic Games, bringing home four medals—three gold and a silver—from Paris. All eyes were certainly on Biles at the Games, and she delivered, performing a spectacularly difficult vault that no other female gymnast uses in competition. “It is wild now that I think about it,” she says, reflecting on the difficulty, and danger, of that vault. “I was 27 years old doing a Yurchenko double pike—maybe I’m crazy!”
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But even as the world’s attention was on her, her own focus was decidedly inward. At the Tokyo Games in 2021, after a scary vault in the opening team event where Biles lost her orientation in the air in what gymnasts call the twisties, she made the difficult—and controversial—decision to withdraw from that event and nearly all of her remaining ones. That included the all-around, in which she was the reigning Olympic champion, a title she was widely expected to defend. She didn’t fully appreciate it then, but the twisties were a physical warning sign of the stress and pressure that had been building around her from shouldering the world’s expectations.
Robbie Lawrence for TIME
“I neglected my mental health,” she says. “I was like, ‘it’s just a couple more months, then another couple more months, and then I can get help.’” Biles took two years off from competing before starting to train again for her third Olympics—but this time on very different terms. “The only reason I came back for Paris was because of the mental work I had put in following Tokyo, and getting myself more comfortable and confident enough to compete again.” That included seeing a therapist, which Biles continued to do while competing in Paris, and acknowledging that she needed support from her family and friends. Her decision to compete in Paris was a way to both celebrate the help she received and, she says, “prove that it worked. It was a personal choice for me so I could be the best version of myself. At the end of the day, the gymnastics is the easy part—I can do that, and I’ve known I can do that. At this point it was making sure that my mental [side] was in tune with everything else.”
She took a different approach leading up to last summer’s Games—prioritizing therapy, strengthening her family support, which now included her husband Jonathan Owens, NFL’s Chicago Bears safety, and granting very limited interviews so she could keep all of the hype and expectations surrounding her Olympic comeback at bay.
Simone Biles performs her routine on the floor at the 2024 Olympic Games. Naomi Baker—Getty Images
Her decision in Tokyo to prioritize her mental health and step back from competing has become a rallying cry of sorts for other young people, from well-known athletes to teens who have found strength in her vulnerability. “It makes me happy that people can feel honest with themselves and the people around them who care about them,” she says of the precedent she set in showing it’s acceptable to admit when you’re struggling, and to ask for help, no matter how famous you are, or where you are when you need it. “They should know that they deserve that help. It just shows the strength in numbers—you are the strongest you can ever be when you’re vulnerable enough to say ‘listen, I need help.’ It makes me really, really happy that people are able to stand up and speak for themselves.”
Finding that voice was particularly challenging for Biles and other elite gymnasts for decades, since the national training structure that groomed them for the Olympics required rigorous monthly camps where they were separated from their families, and discouraged them from speaking out or even admitting they were injured. That culture enabled widespread sexual abuse of dozens of gymnasts, including Biles and many of her teammates, by the national team doctor, which went on for years. Along with some of her teammates, Biles testified to Congress questioning the FBI’s handling of the abuse reports, and she and other gymnasts have also called for both USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee to be held accountable for allowing the abuse to occur.
Biles (middle) and other U.S. gymnasts gave testimony on the abuse they experienced at the hand of Larry Nassar, the former U.S. women’s national gymnastics team doctor, and the FBI’s lack of urgency when handling their cases on September 15, 2021 in Washington, DC. Anna Moneymaker—Getty Images
Thanks to the bravery of Biles and other gymnasts, more athlete safety protocols are now in place, and both organizations have made additional mental health support and services available for Olympic-level athletes who may be struggling. In Paris, Biles says the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee “made it very known that there were people on site to help us if we need anything mentally. That’s been a change over the past few years.” During the Games, she continued to talk to her therapist from home even while competing, calling in for sessions before every major event in the Olympic schedule. “It made a difference to make me more comfortable and it was what I thought I needed,” she says of the regular sessions. That comfort translated into a confidence that drove her to earn a second all-around title, help Team USA win the team gold, and collect a gold and silver in the individual events. Will she be back on the mats for the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028? “I have to decide by 2027 if I want to compete,” she says. “I am getting a little bit older, but never say never.”
Whether or not she returns for a fourth Olympics, Biles has already assured her place in gymnastics and Olympic history as the most decorated gymnast ever. But it will likely be what she did, and continues to do, off the floor to prioritize mental health that truly makes her the “Greatest Of All Time.”
This story is part of the 2025 TIME100. On April 24, at the 2025 TIME100 Gala, TIME presented Simone Biles with the evening’s annual TIME100 Impact Award, recognizing a lifetime of achievement.
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