--:-- Duarte Giraldino: This is In Conversation from Apple News Today. I'm Duarte Giraldino. Every weekend, we talk with journalists behind the best stories on Apple News+. Simone Biles is the most decorated gymnast in the world. She has four Olympic gold medals and 25 world championship medals. She hasn't lost an all-around competition in eight years. And after the Rio Olympics in 2016, many people, including Simone herself, thought she might have hit her peak. But Simone is still breaking new ground in the sport.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: At the U.S. Classic in May, she debuted the most difficult vault in the history of women's gymnastics. She finished first in the U.S. Olympic trials. She's going to be leading the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team in Tokyo this month. She has been a dominant athlete in a way that few other sports have seen somebody remain on top without a really obvious rival for so long. That's sports reporter Louise Radnofsky. Her new profile in Simone in the Wall Street Journal magazine is called Simone Biles Will Not Be Denied. You can read and listen to it on Apple News+.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: I think for reporters who have covered Simone Biles for a number of years, which includes me, but includes many other people, we've also watched her grow from a talented teenager to an extraordinarily poised young woman. Radnofsky talked to Simone a few days after the U.S. Classic competition. In our conversation, she went into Simone's remarkable trajectory and the evolution of her career. She also helps us understand how Simone has been able to be so successful as an athlete while facing tremendous personal struggles.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So Simone Biles is an extraordinary athlete. Put it into perspective for us, just how accomplished is she in the gymnastics world?
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: Simone Biles is an extraordinarily accomplished gymnast by any standards of gymnastics. She does harder skills than almost anybody else. She does them better than almost anybody else. And then over the years, she has also added skills that nobody else was successfully completing. And she's completed those with a very high degree of execution as well.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: Simone Biles has added skills such as the triple twisting double somersault on the floor exercise, a double twisting double somersault dismount from the beam, and a Yurchenko double pike vault, all three of which she may be performing at the Olympics in Tokyo this summer. And each one of these has pushed the boundaries of the sport in some ways.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: To put into perspective on the floor, the code of points rate skills with their difficulty on a ladder scale, A through I, and the triple twisting double somersault when Simone Biles performed it was given a J. So it literally expanded the alphabet that gymnastics was using at the time.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: The Yurchenko double pike vault that she'll be performing has been given a difficulty value of 6.6. There are people, including Simone and her coaches, who believe it should be higher still, a 6.8. But at 6.6, when she performs at an international competition and is entered into the gymnastics code of points, it will be the hardest vault in the history of women's gymnastics.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: But I think what really makes Simone Biles even more extraordinary than all of these things is the amount of things that she is juggling outside at the gym and setting aside in order to be able to perform the way she does.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: What have some of the challenges been like for her when she was younger?
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: The challenges for Simone Biles when she was younger started very early. She entered foster care as a toddler and spent time in foster care in Ohio. And then later with her then grandparents in Texas, later she was adopted by those grandparents who have become her parents. And she doesn't talk much about why she was taken out of her birth mother's care, but she does remember being hungry. And she does say, and the family says, that her mother had struggled with addiction at the time.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: Now, Simone Biles has siblings. Two older siblings ultimately were adopted by a different family member in Ohio while she and her younger sister started their new life in Texas. This is an important story to the Biles family. It is something that Simone Biles has talked about in the context of wanting to see foster care made better for everybody who's involved in it. And it's important in terms of the impact that she thinks that her parents have had on her life.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Oftentimes when we think about Olympic athletes, some folks forget that you have to start extremely young. And some people say that because she started in gymnastics at age six, she got a pretty late start. But that so-called late start, it had some advantages for her, right?
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: I think there a lot that people can take from the path that Simone Biles had in gymnastics about ways things don necessarily have to be done So she did start at six it took her four tries to qualify to compete at the elite level in gymnastics And at 14 which is an age where many gymnasts are being identified as the next potential Olympic star, she wasn't on the junior national team. She was devastated about that. She made the junior national team the next year. And the year after that, she suddenly became the national all-round champion and then the world all-round champion.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: It happened very suddenly when it happened. Part of what happened because of the delayed entry into the most aggressive forms of training that were in existence around elite gymnastics in America at the time is that she wasn't exposed to as much of it from an early age, although she was very much part of gymnastics culture.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: And at the point that she was on the national team, she also came into contact with some of the forces that we've identified and written about that are associated with enabling the abuse of Larry Nassar. Biles was one of Nassar's victims, right?
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: Biles is considered to be one of the central victims in the Nassar abuse scandal because she was one of the first three gymnasts who were identified by American coaches as having concerns about Nassar that they had privately discussed. And so when these concerns were conveyed to the head of USA Gymnastics at the time and the five-week internal investigation by USA Gymnastics began, the other two gymnasts ends up being interviewed by the private investigator retained by USA Gymnastics. And Simone Biles was not interviewed.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: And she was not asked if anything had happened to her that she wanted to talk about. And her parents were not told about the situation. And her name was not included in the information that was given to the FBI when they were eventually, after this five-week internal investigation, asked to look at Larry Nassar.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: And so there was a period of time where top officials were aware that they had a matter on their hands, and they were aware that there was a possibility that their greatest star, she already was in 2015, had been abused while in their care, and they did not follow up on it. And that's what really puts Simone Biles at the heart of the Nassar case, at least insofar as it involves USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Right now, she's the only known Nassar survivor competing at the highest level of gymnastics. What's it like for her in that position?
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: It's an incredibly unusual situation, a unique situation, a situation that clearly takes a toll on her at times, and a situation that she also says she believes is what keeps the issue at the forefront, prevents people from sweeping it under the rug. and the more that it stays out there, the greater the possibility that some of the many unanswered questions around what happened do eventually get answered for her and for other people.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: But it is the case that the majority of the gymnasts have retired from elite competition and she is the only self-identified survivor who continues to compete at the elite level. And that means on some level being out there in a situation where reporters can ask her questions about this, and she might have to think about this at a time when she is preferring to focus her attention on hurtling through the air or doing any of the other extraordinarily difficult things she does that require a laser focus and the ability to tune out everything else.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: It is clearly at times on her mind. She says sometimes that it is at times on her mind. ahead of the 2019 U.S. Championships, she had an extraordinary moment where she let out some of what she was feeling about USA Gymnastics while on the competition floor at a USA Gymnastics event with the then spokeswoman of USA Gymnastics standing next to her.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And I think the other important thing to remember here is that this is a judged sport. This is a sport where athletes feel in some ways that their performance is determined by subjective measures and that a whisper in the wrong place or a look in the wrong direction risks all sort of things that athletes in other sports don't necessarily have to contend with.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: So the amount of bravery that that takes is in some ways mind-blowing. We often think that because it's a judged sport, they're only looking at what these athletes do on the mat, but really everything about the person is being judged in some way.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: I certainly think that it has been for a very long time the perception of the athletes and their parents and the coaches that everything they do is scrutinized. And part of that is not just the judging of the performance on the mat or the beam or the vault or the uneven bars. It's the way that teams are selected as well.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: In the past, the selection of women's teams for major international competitions has certainly been controversial. It's actually still controversial this year, even though it was picked in a much more direct one, two, three, four top finishers in the all-around fashion.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: And I think the fact that USA Gymnastics is the national governing body of the sport in the United States controls gymnasts access to competition that there no route to the World Championships or to the Olympic Games that doesn go through being a member of USA Gymnastics and under the umbrella of the USOPC, means that it's very difficult to be in a position where you're also suing both of those organizations.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Don't think there are many cases that you could point to where you had an athlete who was doing both of those things while still competing and while still delivering the kind of dazzling performances that bring this reflected glory to those organizations in return.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: It's a very complicated relationship. She competed in the U.S. Classic this year, and she did this while her brother was on trial for murder. He's since been acquitted, but how is she able to perform when something like this is going on in her personal life?
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: What we hear from Simone Biles and from her parents is that they have an incredible ability to compartmentalize. And Simone Biles has talked as well about gymnastics being a safe zone for her, that when she's in the gym, she can focus on that. When she's in the gym, it's gym, as she says. And when she's not in the gym, that's when she deals with other things.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: She also has a wide support system around her. And she noted in her interview with us that she also has therapy. And so she often talks about these things there. Sometimes, as we saw at the 2019 National Championships where she excoriated USA Gymnastics, it also bursts out at interesting moments.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: What's noteworthy in a gymnastic sense about that in 2019 is that having had this outburst over the next few days, she went out there and performed for the first time the triple twisting double somersault and the double twisting double somersault from the beam.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: So at times, she has an ability to divide these things up and do gym when it's gym and deal with other stuff privately and the emphasis really being on the private part.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: You mentioned that she has therapy and it would It seemed like mental health of athletes is getting a lot more attention, especially now that tennis player Naomi Osaka is speaking about this issue. Did you talk with Biles about mental health and balancing gymnastics and her personal life, even outside of this therapy?
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Simone Biles' training situation has changed in one particularly noteworthy way since 2016. She has a lot of training mates around her now who are all training at the same elite level. And people may have seen this in domestic competitions over the last few months, that when she's rotating around the apparatus, she's rotating with other representatives of her gym, the World Champion Center.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: And so she almost has a squad, including a very, very talented Jordan Childs, who is going to be on the Olympic team with her. But part of the advantage of training with other athletes is that her coach says it takes up the pressure off focusing so intensely on one gymnast, even if she does happen to be a very special one.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: And Simone says that because the other gymnasts are younger, they keep things light in the gym and they tell her about the latest social media apps. But, you know, they keep in perspective for her this mentality that she knows, but a reminder never hurts that it is just gymnastics.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Miles told you that she's embracing the idea that athletes can be advocates, but she's been very careful about what she speaks out about and when she stays quiet. How does she navigate this dynamic?
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: It's very clear that she's being very thoughtful and that she is speaking out in ways that she has thought through and that she's also deciding when to do it and when not to do it. Or when she has something to say, thinking about exactly how she wants to say it.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: So, for example, when she left Nike and announced that she was forming a new endorsement deal with Athleta, she certainly was pointed in the way that she emphasized that she thought Athleta shared her values more closely. but she also didn't want to say anything negative about her former sponsor and she didn't.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: By the way, how did that move benefit her? At Nike, it was clear from the outside looking in that she was another face in a very crowded roster of athletes who was not necessarily appearing frequently in any composite ads or in her own ads. And Athleta is smaller relative to Nike in the apparel space. And they have Alison Felix, and now they have Simone Biles. And she is the face of the brand.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: They have agreed to become the title sponsor of her tour that she will be going on after the Olympics. She sees them giving her, and they see themselves giving her, an activist platform that she can use how she chooses after the Olympics in particular, when she's more focused there.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: She noted that they made clear to her that they supported her as an individual and that their interest in her went beyond what she did in the gym and that she appreciated having that support for wherever she wanted to take it.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: And at that letter, she has a female focused company where while leotards are an important staple for any gymnastics champion, she also could sell leggings and she could sell sweatshirts and she could sell jackets and she raises the possibility that we will be seeing a lot of Simone Biles after the Olympics
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Gymnastics comebacks are very difficult, in part because the burnout associated with training so intensely for a single Olympics is very hard to avoid. And Biles took a year off and had a fun existence after that and then chose to come back to the sport. But we know two other things, that in 2018 and 2019, while she was mounting this comeback, she was also grappling with everything that was coming out at the time about Nasser, about USA Gymnastics, and any number of other things.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: And that obviously required a strength associated with the gymnastics that was very, very difficult. It was clear to people around her, they've said that in 2020, she was ready to be done after the Olympics, that she could see the finish line and that the finish line was motivating her. So when the finish line was moved by 12 months, she had a very real question about whether she could physically or mentally do that.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: Part of what she said to me at the time in an interview was that she didn't know if she wanted to keep on dealing with USA Gymnastics for another year, which was another insight into the extent to which that relationship and its complications does loom over a lot of what is going on here.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: And so she had to make a decision about whether she could continue to beat burnout for, yes, another year after she had already beaten burnout for a very long time and longer than other people have been able to in this sport.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: She ended up taking about seven weeks out of the gym. Her coach had predicted that the return to the gym could be physically painful because that is a much longer period of time than gymnasts usually are not walking on their hands and walking on their feet instead.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: But also it made coming back in its own way. Yet another challenge that is very impressive looking at from here and now looking at the results of what happened when she did come back.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Do you see her changing gymnastics permanently?
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: I absolutely see Simone Biles changing gymnastics. She has clearly already changed gymnastics as a sport in terms of what is valued, in terms of the heights that gymnasts can reach, particularly on the difficulty scale.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: But also in terms of the relationship between the athletes and the organizations that govern the sport. She has taken on her own federation. She's actually also taken on the international gymnastics federation when she didn't think that they had valued the difficult skills that she was doing highly enough.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: And she has openly said that she disagrees with their assessment, which again, is not something that is considered to be normal. But there is so much about Simone Biles' gymnastics that is not normal that it almost seems fitting that nothing about the way she has approached the sport as an athlete is normal either.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And finally, what can we expect to see from her in Tokyo? The Olympic trials may be very insightful for what we can expect from Simone Biles.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: She had an outstanding first night in which she got one of her most stellar scores that she had in her comeback. She broke 60 points threshold and she was delighted. And the second night she had stumbles and she said afterwards that she'd been wondering how she could live up to night one.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: And so the two-night process of the trials in which she still finished top overall, comfortably made the Olympic team, didn't even do all of her hardest skills that she could have, really shows both the highs and the lows of being Simone Biles.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: Sometimes there is pressure. Sometimes it is possible that the pressure can creep in despite her ability to keep it very blocked out. And sometimes she can have extraordinary nights.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: And in some ways, while it seems like you would be well advised to bet on Simone Biles every single time, and you would, in part because she's starting with higher difficulty value in many areas and most for competitors, and that even gives her room for error.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: It's also true, and she would say and does say that she's human. And the combination of being human and the complexity of gymnastics means that it is still possible that anything can happen.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: And what seems preordained to us is not necessarily preordained to the athletes who have to go out there and actually do it on the moment that it counts. And she has done it every single time in the moment that it counts up until now.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: And that still means that Tokyo is going to be whatever Tokyo is.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Louise Radnofsky, thank you so much for joining us.
--:-- Louise Radnofsky: Thank you for having me.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Radanovsky's article on Simone Biles is available for Apple News Plus subscribers. iPhone users can subscribe in the Apple News app.
