BILES Simone

General
PARIS POSSIBILITY
In April 2021, after she had initially planned to retire after the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, stated that she may continue to the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. "Right now, my focus is the [Tokyo] Olympic Games, Afterwards, I'm not so sure because [coaches] Cecile and Laurent [Landi] are from Paris and so they have kind of guilted me into at least being a specialist and coming back, but the main goal is the 2021 Olympics first." (bbc.co.uk, 08 Apr 2021)

HIATUS
In November 2016 she announced that she would be taking a break from competitive gymnastics. She made the announcement while promoting her book, 'Courage to Soar'. "I am going to take some time off from the gym, just so that I can go out, have fun and really just embrace the moment that we have. Especially vacation, because I couldn't do that before with how much I trained. I was always in the gym. I think my body needs a rest. It is breaking down on me for a little bit." After undertaking promotional activities and appearing on US dance competition TV show 'Dancing with the Stars', she decided to return to training in November 2017 with new coach Laurent Landi. She returned to competition at the US Classic in July 2018. (usatoday.com, 01 Nov 2017; flogymnastics.com, 17 Oct 2017; nbcsports.com, 18 Nov 2016; usatoday.com, 28 Jul 2018)

NAMED ELEMENTS
In December 2018 the International Gymnastics Federation [FIG] entered a vault element named the 'Biles' into the Code of Points. She first performed the element at the 2018 World Championships in Doha, Qatar. It involves a round off flic-flac with half turn [180°] on to a stretched salto forward with two/one turn [720°] off. She has a further three elements named after her in the Code of Points. (espn.co.uk, 13 Oct 2019; gymnastics.sport, 21 Dec 2018)

In 2019 she became the first US female artistic gymnast, and second female artistic gymnast from any nation, to win five gold medals at a single edition of the world championships. As of the 2019 edition of the tournament, she holds the record for most gold medals [19] and most overall medals [25] won by an artistic gymnast of either gender at the world championships. (SportsDeskOnline, 27 Jan 2020; espn.co.uk, 13 Oct 2019; bbc.co.uk, 03 Nov 2018; usagym.org, 17 Oct 2018)

She equalled the record for most gold medals won by a female artistic gymnast at a single edition of the Olympic Games when she won four gold medals at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro. She was the fifth artistic gymnast to have achieved the feat. (usagym.org, 17 Oct 2018; SportsDeskOnline, 17 Oct 2018)