May We Never Stop Being in Awe of Simone Biles
Normally, Simone Biles ends her floor exercise routine with her right hand on her chest, her left up in the air, as her music comes to a close. But during Thursday’s all-around competition, she changed...
View ArticleThe Podcast ‘Heavy Medals’ Examines How the Karolyis Built a Texas Gymnastics...
“When he heads for his ranch on a rural highway north of Houston, in his four-wheel drive with Merle Haggard on the dashboard cassette deck and a day’s collection of bugs on the windshield, well, you...
View ArticleSimone Biles on the Tokyo Olympics and the Outrageously Difficult Vault She...
A year ago this month, the countdown clock to the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo was halted and then reset because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, once again, we’re just about four months out from an...
View ArticleWhat Should Fans Expect From the Next Phase of Simone Biles’s Career?
The announcement that Simone Biles, the greatest gymnast of all time and hometown icon of Spring, Texas, was returning to elite competition came with little fanfare. There was no interview with a major...
View ArticleSimone Biles Won’t Say It Yet, but She’s Gunning for Paris 2024
The gymnastics highlight of the 2023 U.S. Classic happened before it went live on television. Simone Biles, in warmups for her first competition since the Tokyo Olympics two years ago, stuck her...
View ArticleAnother Gymnastics Skill Once Called Impossible Will Now Be Called Biles
The naming of a new skill in gymnastics doesn’t usually generate much fanfare. It’s mostly procedural. A gymnast’s federation submits the element at the start of an international event, such as the...
View ArticleA Houston Breakdancer Shoots for Olympic Glory
When Jeffrey Louis heard that breakdancing—or breaking, as it is often called by its practitioners—was making its debut at the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he emailed the...
View ArticleI Remember the Last Time Simone Biles Was an Underdog—More Than a Decade Ago
The first time I saw Simone Biles in competition, she didn’t win. This, it would turn out, was an exceedingly rare experience, because winning has become synonymous with the Texan—it’s something she’s...
View ArticleIn Paris, Simone Biles Finally Found a True Rival
The final image of the 2024 Olympic women’s gymnastics competition captured an iconic moment: Simone Biles and her U.S. teammate Jordan Chiles—both of whom train at Biles’s World Champions Centre in...
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