After collecting her 10th overall Olympic medal, Simone Biles heard an onslaught of “What’s next?” questions — but she’s not ready to answer anything just yet.
“You guys really gotta stop asking athletes what’s next after they win a medal at the Olympics,” Biles, 27, wrote via X on Sunday, August 4. “Let us soak up the moment we’ve worked our whole lives for.”
Biles won her third gold medal at the Paris Olympics on Saturday, August 3, in the women’s vault finals. Afterward, she was questioned about her intent to compete at the 2028 Games that will be held in Los Angeles.
“Is this my last? Definitely [my final] Yurchenko double pike,” Biles quipped in a press conference, naming the vault that she performed on Saturday. “I mean, I kinda nailed that one.”
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Biles, however, did note that she is “never [saying] never” to a potential gymnastics return for the Team USA-held sporting event.
“The next Olympics is at home [in Los Angeles]. So, you just never know,” Biles added. “But, I am getting really old.”
At 27, Biles is now the oldest All-Around women’s gymnastics champion since Maria Gorokhovskaya won the medal in 1952. At the Paris Games, Biles won gold in the All-Around and team events. She is also expected to compete in the beam and floor exercises’ respective finals on Monday, August 5.
The 2024 competition was Biles’ comeback after she suffered the “twisties” during the Tokyo Olympics.
“It’s just like your body, your brain opens up, you have no idea where you are,” she recalled during an April episode of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. “So, I open landed like that and as soon as I land, I kind of grin and I’m like, ‘S–t,’ and I salute, and I want to run. If I could’ve gotten on a plane and flown home, I would’ve done it.”
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Biles continued, “I go to tell my coach and I said, ‘I’m done. I’m not doing any more. Because if I survive that, I don’t know how much else I can survive.’ I always say I’m a cat with nine lives, but I think ‘That was my ninth, I’m done.’”
Biles, who made her Olympic debut in Rio in 2016, took time off from training to reprioritize her mental health. When she felt more grounded, Biles returned to the competitive circuit in 2023 in an attempt to make the Paris team.
Biles is one of the women representing the United States’ artistic gymnastics team in Paris alongside Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey and Hezly Rivera. In addition to the team gold, Carey, 24, earned a bronze medal in the women’s vault exercises. Lee, 21, and Chiles, 23, will compete in the upcoming uneven bars and floor finals, respectively, this weekend.
