Simone Biles has overcome foster care, sexual abuse, a dangerous neurological phenomenon mid-competition, and intense public scrutiny on her way to becoming the most decorated gymnast in history, with 11 Olympic medals and 30 World Championship medals. Her story isn’t just about athletic talent. It’s about navigating one serious challenge after another and returning stronger each time.
Foster Care and Family Separation
Biles entered the foster care system at age three after her biological mother struggled with drug and alcohol abuse. She and her three siblings, Adria, Tevin, and Ashley, were separated from their mother and placed in care. When Biles was six, her maternal grandfather Ron Biles and his wife Nellie adopted Simone and her younger sister Adria, moving them to Texas. Their two older siblings, Tevin and Ashley, were adopted by Ron’s sister in Cleveland, Ohio. The family was split across two states.
Biles has spoken openly about this chapter of her life, calling Ron and Nellie her Mom and Dad. That stability gave her the foundation to begin gymnastics, but the early years of instability and family separation shaped her in ways she’s discussed publicly throughout her career.
Sexual Abuse by Larry Nassar
Biles is one of hundreds of gymnasts sexually abused by Larry Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics team doctor. She was the only active survivor still competing at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, which made the weight of that trauma uniquely visible on the world stage.
In her September 2021 testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Biles described the ongoing toll: “The scars of this horrific abuse continue to live with all of us.” She explained how the one-year postponement of the Tokyo Games meant returning to the gym, to training, and to therapy while “living daily among the reminders of this story for another 365 days.” She told senators she had worked to maintain a connection between the institutional failures and the competition in Tokyo, calling it “an exceptionally difficult burden,” particularly without any family members allowed to travel with her due to pandemic restrictions.
The abuse didn’t just affect her emotionally. It shaped the context of every competition she entered for years, as she carried both the pressure of being the world’s best gymnast and the unresolved trauma of what the sport’s own institutions had allowed to happen.
ADHD and Public Medication Disclosure
Biles has ADHD and has taken medication for it since childhood. This became public not on her own terms but through a 2016 hack of the World Anti-Doping Agency’s database, which revealed she had a therapeutic use exemption for her medication. Rather than deflect, she addressed it directly on social media: “I have ADHD, and I have taken medication for it since I was a kid. Please know, I believe in clean sport, have always followed the rules, and will continue to do so. Having ADHD and taking medicine for it is nothing to be ashamed of, nothing that I’m afraid to let people know.”
The leak was designed to cast suspicion on athletes, and Biles turned it into a moment of advocacy, normalizing ADHD treatment for millions of people watching.
Competing Through Physical Pain
Biles has a pattern of performing at the highest level while dealing with injuries that would sideline most athletes. In 2018, she was hospitalized in Doha the night before qualifying at the World Championships after two days of stomach pain on her right side. Doctors found a kidney stone, which she nicknamed the “Doha pearl.” She tweeted from her hospital bed: “This kidney stone can wait… doing it for my team!” The next day, she posted the top all-around qualifying score of 60.965 and recorded the highest individual scores on beam, vault, and floor. Her opening vault was a combination previously performed in competition only by men, scoring 15.966, the highest score on any event that day by a wide margin.
The following year, she won the U.S. national championships with broken toes on both feet. These weren’t minor inconveniences. Gymnastics landings generate forces many times an athlete’s body weight, and competing with fractures in the feet is genuinely dangerous.
The Twisties at the Tokyo Olympics
The most public obstacle of Biles’ career came during the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, when she experienced what gymnasts call “the twisties,” a phenomenon where the brain and body lose their connection during airborne skills. She withdrew from the team final after the first rotation on vault and later pulled out of the individual all-around final and several event finals.
The twisties aren’t a confidence problem or stage fright. They’re a neurological disconnect. During complex aerial movements, the brain constantly compares what it expects to feel with what the body’s sensory systems are actually reporting: visual input, signals from nerves that track body position, and balance information from the inner ear. Through years of practice, gymnasts build refined internal models of their movements so precise that adjustments happen automatically. Under extreme stress, though, an athlete may try to consciously control movements that were previously automatic. According to researchers at Stanford University, this conscious override makes the movement “less fluid, less accurate, more strenuous and more error-prone.” Stress hormones like cortisol may also interfere directly, since the brain areas responsible for initiating learned movement patterns carry receptors for those hormones.
The practical result is terrifying. Biles described it simply: “I had no idea where I was in the air.” For a gymnast performing twisting flips at height, losing spatial awareness mid-skill can lead to catastrophic injury. Landing on the head or neck is a real possibility. Her decision to withdraw was, in the most literal sense, a safety decision.
Public Backlash and Mental Health Stigma
Biles’ withdrawal in Tokyo triggered a fierce public debate. Some commentators called her a quitter. Others accused her of letting her teammates down. The criticism came from all directions: social media, cable news, even some former athletes. For someone already carrying the weight of abuse survival, pandemic isolation, and the pressure of being considered the greatest gymnast ever, the public response added another layer of pain to an already difficult moment.
Biles has spoken about how therapy became a non-negotiable part of her life. She maintains a weekly routine she calls “Therapy Thursdays,” and has been candid about how hard it can be to show up. “In the beginning, I think the hardest part is logging on to my therapy sessions and convincing myself to go,” she told Olympics.com. “But as soon as I see my therapist and we start talking, it’s like I’m yapping the whole time.”
The 2024 Paris Comeback
After a two-year break from competition following Tokyo, Biles returned to elite gymnastics and made the 2024 Paris Olympic team at age 27, an age when most female gymnasts have long retired. In Paris, she won four medals: gold in the team event, gold in the individual all-around, gold on vault, and silver on floor exercise. That brought her career Olympic total to 11 medals, seven of them gold, alongside 30 World Championship medals with 23 golds.
The Paris performance was significant not just for the medals but for what it represented. Biles had stepped away when continuing would have been dangerous, rebuilt her mental health with professional support, and returned to the sport’s highest stage performing at a level no one else could match. The obstacles she overcame weren’t just physical or biographical. They were structural: a sport that failed to protect its athletes, a culture that stigmatized mental health, and a public that sometimes punished vulnerability more than it rewarded honesty.