There are athletes who win. And then there is Simone Biles.
The numbers are almost difficult to process: 11 Olympic medals across three Games, 30 World Championship medals, six skills named after her in the gymnastics code of points, a Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded at 25 years old, the youngest recipient in history. She is, by every measurable standard, the most decorated gymnast the sport has ever produced.
She is also 29 years old, married to an NFL safety, still processing a childhood spent in foster care, still in therapy every Thursday, and still fielding questions about whether she will compete at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. The story of Simone Arianne Biles Owens is not just about what she has won. It’s about what it cost, and why she kept going anyway.
Columbus, Foster Care, and the Family That Changed Everything
Biles was born on March 14, 1997, in Columbus, Ohio. Her biological mother, Shanon, struggled with severe drug and alcohol addiction and was in and out of jail during Simone’s early childhood. By the time Simone was three years old, she and her three siblings, Adria, Tevin, and Ashley, had been placed into the foster care system.
Her maternal grandfather, Ron Biles, flew the children to Texas as soon as he learned they were in foster care. He later described being unable to stand the thought of them scattered to strangers. He and his wife, Nellie, adopted Simone and her younger sister Adria in 2000. Simone was six. Tevin and Ashley went to live with Ron’s sister. All four siblings were adopted into permanent homes, maintaining contact with each other and, when possible, their biological mother.
Ron told the girls they could call him and Nellie “Mom and Dad” instead of Grandma and Grandpa. Simone accepted the invitation and has never wavered. “They became the only real parents I’ve ever known,” she wrote in her 2016 autobiography, Courage to Soar. “The ones who have raised and guided me, and loved me every day of my life.”
Nellie became a nurse and later co-owned multiple nursing homes in Texas. Ron became an air traffic controller. They raised Simone in Spring, Texas, outside Houston, and when her training intensified, Ron stepped in as her homeschool tutor. Her parents also built her a private training facility, the World Champions Centre, which remains her home gym.
Gymnastics found Simone by accident. During a school field trip to a local gym at age six, she watched other girls flipping and immediately started copying them. Coaches noticed. She has never really stopped.
From Prodigy to GOAT: The Records Nobody Else Could Touch
By 2013, Biles had become the first Black woman to win the all-around gold at the World Championships. She was sixteen. By the time she arrived at the 2016 Rio Olympics, she was already the most dominant gymnast in the world.
Rio produced five medals: four golds (team, individual all-around, vault, floor exercise) and a bronze on balance beam. She left Brazil as the most decorated American gymnast in a single Olympic Games, having also become the first U.S. gymnast to compete in and win four gold medals at the same Games.
The skills bearing her name reflect the technical extremes she pushed the sport toward. “The Biles” on floor exercise (a double layout with a half twist) was initially rated D because judges said it was too dangerous to encourage others to attempt. She performed it anyway and had it named for her. She currently has six eponymous skills across four apparatus: vault, floor, beam, and bars. No other active gymnast comes close.
After Rio, she took a two-year break, returned to win 30 medals at the 2018-2019 World Championships seasons, and built her medal total to a level that no other gymnast, male or female, has reached. Her competitive record at Worlds includes six individual all-around titles.
Tokyo, the Twisties, and the Courage to Stop
The 2020 Tokyo Olympics, held in 2021 after pandemic delays, should have been a coronation. Biles arrived as the overwhelming favorite and the central figure of Team USA’s gymnastics program. What happened instead became one of the most consequential moments in the modern history of sports.
Mid-competition, during the team final, Biles withdrew. She then withdrew from the individual all-around, the vault final, the floor final, and the uneven bars. She cited her mental health. She also revealed what she was dealing with physically: “the twisties.”
The twisties are a gymnastics-specific phenomenon, a disconnection between the brain and the body that causes athletes to lose spatial awareness mid-air during twisting skills. For a gymnast performing at Biles’ difficulty level, competing with the twisties is not just a matter of performance, it is a safety risk. A disoriented mid-air body on skills rated at the top of the difficulty scale can mean catastrophic injury.
“Leading up to Tokyo, I was so nervous about getting injured physically that I neglected my mental health,” she said at Paris. “Then I was injured, except it was a mental injury.”
The public reaction to her withdrawal was polarized, and the criticism from certain commentators was harsh. She absorbed it while also processing the fact that she had competed at Tokyo carrying a secret she has since made public: she was one of 156 women who came forward in 2018 as survivors of sexual abuse by former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar.
In September 2021, Biles testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee about the FBI’s failures in investigating Nassar, stating: “I blame Larry Nassar, and I also blame an entire system that enabled and perpetrated his abuse.” She told senators that the organizations created to protect her had failed to do so. Nassar is serving up to 175 years in prison. Biles has been vocal that the abuse was a factor in the mental health crisis that surfaced at Tokyo.
She took a two-year break from competitive gymnastics after Tokyo. “After Tokyo, I literally had not one ounce of belief in myself,” she said.
Paris 2024: The Most Watched Comeback in Sports History
By 2023, Biles was back. She won a record-breaking eighth U.S. National Championship title, became the oldest woman to win the all-around title, and at the World Championships in Antwerp, won five medals including four golds, bringing her World Championship total to 30.
She was also doing weekly therapy. Every Thursday. She has described it as a non-negotiable part of her training regimen.
Paris 2024 was everything Tokyo was not. Biles won three gold medals (team final, individual all-around, vault) and a silver on floor exercise, a result she later joked about given the degree of difficulty she was performing compared to the field. Her all-around gold made her the first gymnast since Věra Čáslavská in 1968 to win back-to-back Olympic all-around titles eight years apart.
Suni Lee finished third in the individual all-around at Paris, behind Biles and Romania’s Rebeca Andrade, in a podium moment that generated one of the most celebrated images of the Games. The two have trained, competed, and supported each other across two Olympics now.
Her Paris performance prompted Netflix to release a four-part documentary, “Simone Biles Rising”, which chronicled the period from her return through Paris. The series covered the twisties, Nassar, her identity as a Black woman in a predominantly white sport, and her marriage. It became one of the most-streamed sports documentaries of 2024.
Jonathan Owens, the Wedding, and the Long-Distance Marriage That Works
Biles met Jonathan Owens, an NFL safety, on the celebrity dating app Raya in 2020. The timing was, by all accounts, good: she was in her post-Tokyo hiatus, out of gymnastics, and figuring out who she was without competition defining everything.
They got engaged on February 15, 2022, and married on April 22, 2023, first in a courthouse ceremony in Houston and then in a larger celebration in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Owens, who has played for the Houston Texans, Green Bay Packers, and Chicago Bears, signed with the Indianapolis Colts ahead of the 2026 NFL season.
The marriage has required logistical creativity. Biles’ training base is in Spring, Texas. Owens’ NFL career moves city to city. She became a fixture at Chicago Bears games during his two seasons there, and the couple has been candid about navigating a long-distance marriage between two professional athletes on different schedules.
In the Netflix documentary, Biles explained why she chose to include their relationship so prominently. “Yes, I can be married and still be at the top of my game,” she said. “Getting married and going back to the Olympics was a huge part of my life that I didn’t want to gloss over.”
Owens has been consistent in his public support. He was in Paris cheering her on at every event, and in Milan for the 2026 Winter Olympics, where Biles was supporting American athletes rather than competing.
The Brands, the Business, and $25 Million
Biles signed with Nike at 18 years old, before she had competed in a single Olympic Games. That partnership lasted six years. She left Nike in 2021 to sign with Athleta, a Gap-owned brand focused on women’s athletic wear. Her departure was principled: she cited differing values and the brand’s superior commitment to supporting female athletes, a decision that came at the same time Allyson Felix was publicly criticizing Nike’s maternity policies.
Her Athleta partnership has included a signature “Because I Can” collection of leotards and activewear. She also holds deals with Visa, United Airlines, MasterClass, Uber Eats, and Beats by Dre, and has her signature leotard line with GK Elite. At peak earning years, she has made over $10 million annually from sponsorships alone.
Her net worth is estimated at approximately $25 million. The Olympic prize money itself is modest (around $37,500 per gold from the U.S. Olympic Committee), so the commercial portfolio has always been where the real number is built. She is also a Laureus Ambassador, announced in February 2026, deepening a relationship with the global sports charity that has awarded her Sportswoman of the Year four times.
She and Owens have a combined net worth estimated between $25 and $27 million. They own a home in the Houston area and broke ground on a new property in 2023.
What She Carries Off the Mat
Something that gets compressed in the highlight reels is the full weight of what Biles has had to hold simultaneously while being the world’s most watched gymnast.
She has spoken publicly about being a Nassar survivor, about the foster care system, about the body image pressures of elite gymnastics, about the specific experience of being a Black woman in a sport where the standards and aesthetics were built around a very different image. She has talked about the loneliness of Tokyo, the years of suppressed trauma, and the moment she decided therapy was not optional.
The Ilona Maher effect at Paris 2024 drew a lot of attention to a certain kind of athlete who is unfiltered and joyful publicly. Biles operates differently: she is warm and witty in media settings, but she has built a very clear boundary around what she will discuss and when. The Netflix series was a controlled, deliberate choice to let people in. It is not a permanent open door.
What is permanent is her impact. In 2022, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, at the youngest age in the award’s history.
The 2028 Question
As of early 2026, Biles has not retired, but she has not announced plans to compete at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics either. At the Milan Winter Olympics in February 2026, she was asked directly about her plans. She cited the need for her body to recover and described the decision as one she has not yet made. She will be 31 years old at the LA Games.
The gymnastics world notes that Livvy Dunne and a new generation of collegiate gymnasts have been inspired by the sport’s elevation in the Biles era. Whether Biles competes again at a Games-level or becomes the sport’s most prominent face without competing, her presence shapes the next chapter of American gymnastics either way.
She has made it clear that this version of Simone Biles, post-Paris, post-therapy, post-documentary, will not compete for anyone but herself. When she decides, that will be the reason.
Frequently Asked Questions
How old is Simone Biles?
Simone Biles was born on March 14, 1997, making her 29 years old as of 2026. She was born in Columbus, Ohio, and raised in Spring, Texas.
Who is Simone Biles married to?
Simone Biles is married to Jonathan Owens, an NFL safety. The couple met on the dating app Raya in 2020, got engaged on February 15, 2022, and married on April 22, 2023. Owens signed with the Indianapolis Colts ahead of the 2026 NFL season.
How many Olympic medals does Simone Biles have?
Biles has 11 Olympic medals total: five from the 2016 Rio Olympics, two from the 2020 Tokyo Games, and four from the 2024 Paris Olympics, including three gold medals. She also holds 30 World Championship medals, making her the most decorated gymnast in history.
Why did Simone Biles withdraw from the Tokyo Olympics?
Biles withdrew from multiple events at the Tokyo 2020 Games, which were held in 2021, citing mental health concerns. She was dealing with “the twisties,” a gymnastics condition where the mind and body lose synchronization during aerial skills, creating a significant safety risk. She has since connected the mental health crisis in part to unprocessed trauma related to the Larry Nassar abuse scandal.
What is Simone Biles’ net worth?
Simone Biles’ net worth is estimated at approximately $25 million. Most of her earnings come from endorsement deals with Athleta, Visa, United Airlines, MasterClass, Uber Eats, Beats by Dre, and her GK Elite leotard line. During peak earning years, she has generated more than $10 million annually through sponsorships.
Will Simone Biles compete at the 2028 LA Olympics?
As of 2026, Biles has not announced a decision regarding the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. When asked in February 2026, she cited the need for recovery and did not commit to a timeline. She will be 31 years old when the Los Angeles Games begin in the summer of 2028.