One phone call changed their lives. It expanded a family, and set in motion the development of one of gymnastics’ great stars. Of course, nobody knew it at the time. This was about finding a home for young children.
Simone Biles was 3 years old in the summer of 1999. Her mother, Shanon, was battling drug and alcohol abuse, unable to care for her children. Ron Biles received a phone call. It was a social worker in Ohio, informing him his grandchildren had been taken away from their mother and put in foster care.
“Go ahead and send the kids to us,” he told the social worker. “I didn’t want them to be raised by a stranger.”
Shanon’s four children came to stay with them in Spring, Texas, a Houston suburb. By 2002, Ron and his wife, Nellie, officially had adopted Simone and her younger sister, Adria. Her two brothers stayed with Ron’s sister. According to Bleacher Report, Simone’s father abandoned the family years earlier.
Fifteen years later, Simone is one of the biggest names in the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, a dominant gymnast and the three-time defending world champion in the women’s all-around event, and predicted to return home with as many as five gold medals.
“It’s hard to put into words,” Nellie said.
Ron, a retired air traffic controller, said the transition was harder on him and his wife than the two girls. They were too young to understand the situation. Ron and Nellie were preparing for an empty nest with two teenage sons, until one phone call changed their lives.
Simone, now 19, was a happy child, Ron said, hyperactive and always smiling. They first noticed her athleticism in the backyard. Her older brother Adam and his friends would always be jumping on a trampoline. She desperately wanted to join in, but was scared to ask. At her foster home, she wasn’t allowed to use their trampoline because of insurance issues. Eventually, she built up the nerve to ask, and joined them.
“She fell in love with it,” Adam said.
Simone’s introduction to gymnastics came at the age of 6, on a field trip to a gymnastics center. She began taking classes and has been hooked ever since. Simone might miss school on occasion, but she never missed a workout. She treated gymnastics like a full-time job. At the age of 13, when gymnastics became a focal point of her life, Simone began getting home schooled, to further dedicate herself to the sport.
“It’s pretty miraculous she found something she loved that early,” Adam said.
Said Nellie: “I thought it was a good sport for her, simply because she was such an active child. I just knew this was going to help her in terms of controlling some of that energy.”
Simone, known for her infectious smile, sense of humor and relaxed demeanor, didn’t compete in the 2012 Summer Olympics because she was too young to qualify, but she has dominated the sport since the summer of 2013, when she won the U.S. and world championships, starting a winning streak that remains strong.
She has won the last four U.S. titles and last three world all-around crowns. In the last three years, Biles has claimed 14 worlds medals, 10 of them gold — both records. She hasn’t lost an all-around competition since August 2013.
“She’s kind of like superhuman,” 2004 Olympic all-around gold medalist Carly Patterson said in a phone interview. “We’ve never seen a gymnast like her, I feel like. Just the level of difficulty [of her routine] and the skills she has, you do not see that from other gymnasts, the power, the strength she has. She’s proven she’s unstoppable. She can handle whatever gets thrown her way.”
When she first saw Biles perform up close, 1996 Olympic balance-beam gold medalist Shannon Miller said “her jaw dropped,” she was so impressed.
“I love watching her compete live, because you really get a feel for the incredible power she has,” Miller said. “I would watch her compete, and she would walk through these routines like they were no big deal, like they were the easiest things in the world. Then I had to remind myself these were the most difficult moves.”
However, the Olympics are a different stage, the biggest stage a gymnast can find, Miller and Patterson said. All eyes will be on Biles, pressure she has never faced, expected to carry the U.S. and come back home to Houston with tons of hardware.
“The Olympics is just a different animal,” Miller said. “You always prepare yourself and you always think you’re ready and you walk into that arena, just the hype and the media and attention, it’s so much more than you ever imagined. For Simone, what she needs to do is stay focused. Don’t let a lot of things going on around her get into her head, because she’s great. If she does what she needs to do, she’s going to walk away with a lot of hardware.”
The consensus is that whatever happens in Rio, Biles’ place in gymnastics lore is set as one of the elite athletes. Then again, everyone expects her to be one of the big stars of these games anyway, and establish herself as potentially the greatest gymnast ever.
“She has an amazing career already,” Patterson said, “and I know she will only add to that.”
Simone’s biological mother is doing better these days, Ron said. She’s drug-free and raising two children. Simone speaks to her from time to time, and has met her on a few occasions. When she was old enough to understand, Ron and Nellie told her about her birth mother and showed her pictures.
“I wonder what my life would be like if none of this happened,” Simone told Time magazine. “I want to know why my mother did what she did. But those aren’t questions for me because that was her lifestyle when I wasn’t even born. I have everything I need so there are no blanks left unfilled. I never felt I had questions or needed answers or had a part of me that was missing.”
Ron and Nellie made sure of that, sacrificing to make sure Simone had everything she needed. They even built a gymnastics gym, the World Champions Centre, for her to train at that was just 10 minutes from their home. It has all led to the Olympics, a moment she has been working toward for years.
“It’s an emotional attachment and an emotional feeling. We know what she’s put into this sport,” Nellie said. “It requires a lot of dedication, a lot of sacrifices, and as parents we gave up a lot. We canceled vacations. Our vacations were traveling with Simone [for competitions]. It’s been a sacrifice on our part, because this is something our daughter enjoys and is passionate about. We’re willing to go on this journey with her.”
Next year, however, the Biles family plans on making a trip together, and not for gymnastics.
“I don’t know where,” Nellie joked, “but somewhere.”