Simone Biles is back. The star gymnast plans to return to competition at the US Classic near Chicago in early August. It will be his first competition since the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
The United States Gymnastics Federation announced Wednesday that Biles, a seven-time Olympic medalist and 2016 Olympic champion, is part of the women’s field for the one-day event scheduled for Aug. 5 at NOW Arena in Hoffman Estates, Ill.
Turbulent years
Biles has stayed away from the competition for the majority of the past two years, after a turbulent time in Japan.
She had made the decision to retire from several disciplines to focus on her mental health, which had shifted the focus from the Olympics to the general well-being of the athletes.
Biles cheered on her fellow Americans, who won the silver medal in the team competition. She then withdrew from the finals of the all-around, vault and floor exercises, for which she was already qualified even though she had faced what are known as ‘twisties’ — a gymnastics term which represents athletes’ loss of spatial awareness when in flight.
Simone Biles returned for the balance beam final, in which she won the bronze medal, tying Shannon Miller’s record for most Olympic medals won by a US gymnast. She hinted at the Paris Games in 2024, but only after taking a long break.
The last two years have been kind of a whirlwind. Biles made headlines during his post-Olympic tour in the fall of 2021 and married NFL player Jonathan Owens – now defensive back for the Green Bay Packers since this spring.
The 26-year-old gymnast has also become one of the strongest advocates for the need for athletes to find space to protect their mental health, after her stand in Japan brought the issue to the fore. . While the conversation around the subject is constantly evolving, Biles’ return to the sport she dominated for nearly a decade suggests an athlete who wants to come back on her own terms.
More moderate approach
The American Classic is one of the flagship events of the USA Gymnastics Federation’s annual calendar and it usually serves as a warm-up for the National Championships, scheduled this year in San Jose at the end of August.
Biles had used the American Classic for his return to competition in 2018, after a two-year hiatus following a record medal haul at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. It had taken her just two hours to show that she was still the benchmark in her sport, paving the way for another spectacular run that included two more world all-around titles, in 2018 and 2019, and three more national titles.
Things could be different this time around, in more than one way.
Biles had courted the spotlight during his preparation for Tokyo, in many ways becoming the face of the American Olympic movement. It now appears to be taking a more subdued approach with the Paris Games, due in about a year. On his various social networks, there is almost no gymnastics, the athlete instead using them to highlight snippets of his personal life.
And for the first time since she shot to fame as a teenager in 2013, Biles won’t have to shoulder the burden of being the American program’s standard bearer.
Sunisa Lee, who won gold in the all-around final in Tokyo, will also be at the American Classic, having spent the past two years competing at Auburn University. She helped to massively increase interest in college gymnastics.