Simone Biles Flips Into The History Books Again

Simone Biles, the gymnastic phenom who took the 2016 Olympics by storm, has added another milestone to her historic gymnastics career with a gold medal at the 2018 United States Gymnastics Championships on Sunday.

According to the United States Olympic Team, Biles is the first woman ever with five U.S. Gymnastics all-around titles.

Biles became the oldest woman (21) to win the all-around crown since Linda Metheny Mulvihill shared the gold with Joan Moore Gnat in 1971.

Since making her debut at the U.S. Gymnastics Championships in 2013, Biles has been racking up awards left and right! She has taken gold in the all-around in each of her five appearances at the event—she didn’t participate last year while taking a hiatus—and has won 16 gold medals across every discipline.

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But her road to gold was paved with hardship. Simone’s mom struggled with drug and alcohol abuse after she was born and her father was never there. So at the age of three, Simone was in foster care.

Ronald Biles, Simone’s biological grandfather received a call that changed his and Simone’s life forever.

“I got a call from a social worker that said Simone and her sister were in foster care. So I said without hesitation, ‘send them to me,’” he recalls. So Ronald moved them down to Houston and soon after he and his wife Nellie, adopted them.

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“She was so tiny and jumping off everything. I was so scared,” says Nellie. “But Simone, she wasn’t afraid one bit.”

The couple says that they had no choice but to put her in gymnastics where she flourished. Her room is a…

… testament to that with gold medals, trophies and winning ribbons from tons of competitions. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Fast-forward to now, after taking all of 2017 off from competition, Biles began training last October with an eye on competing for Team USA at the 2020 Olympics. Her first event back was an overwhelming success with a little under two years to go before the Tokyo Games.