Olympic Players: All you need to know about American gymnast Simone Biles

Simone Biles of the Team United States withdrew from the second Tokyo Olympics gymnastics competition to preserve her mental health, casting significant question on her participation in the rest of the Games. The 24-year-old officially withdrew from the individual all-around competition at the Ariake Gymnastics Centre a day after the failed landing on her opening vault. Biles said she had to "do what's best for me and focus on my mental health" after withdrawing from the team event, in which she earned silver as a result of beginning the final.

Simone was born in 1997 in Columbus, Ohio, and was placed in foster care with her three siblings. Many consider Biles to be one of the finest and most dominant gymnasts of all time because of her 30 Olympic and World Championship medals. When she began competing in 2007, she was a level 8 gymnast. At the junior elite level, Biles was already a star in 2011. In 2015, she became the first woman to win three straight global all-around titles. She also plans to get a real job after she’s done competing.

During her career, Biles has won 36 medals in total, including 27 gold, five silver, and four bronzes. Biles has 19 goal medals from the World Gymnastics Championships, in addition to her excellent performance during her lone Olympic campaign. In her last five appearances in the competition, she has won gold in the all-around. Since 2013, she hasn't lost an all-around competition. Her five medals, four gold, and one bronze, at the 2016 Rio Olympics broke the American record for the most medals won by a female gymnast in a single Olympics. Biles has won a total of seven US Gymnastics Championships in her career. She has won each of the seven championships since 2013, with the exception of 2017, when she sat out the tournament due to a sabbatical. With 25 medals at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, Biles holds the record for most career medals. Biles won the all-around title final by 2.1 points at the 2019 World Championships. That's the largest winning margin in a women's all-around final in history.

In 2015, Biles was selected Team USA's Female Olympic Athlete of the Year. Simone Biles was named one of ESPNW's Impact 25 and was named Sportswoman of the Year by the Women's Sports Foundation after winning the Glamour Award for Record Breaker in 2016. She was also named one of BBC's 100 Women, and after the world championships, she was named one of ESPNW's Impact 25 and chosen as Sportswoman of the Year by the Women's Sports Foundation. Biles won the ESPY Award for Best Female Athlete, the Shorty Awards for Sports Excellence, and the Laureus World Sports Award for Sportswoman of the Year in 2017. Consecutively for two years, she won the Laureus World Sports Award for Sportswoman of the Year in 2020.

Biles' biological mother, Shannon Biles, was unable to care for her and her three siblings because of substance abuse during her early infancy. The quartet passed through foster care several times, but Biles was adopted by her maternal grandpa and his wife in 2003. She acquired relatively bulkier muscles as a teen due to a rigorous training program that led to peak fitness which resulted in her being bullied at school. After a bad performance at the 2013 US Classic, she was also treated by a sports psychologist at the age of 16. Biles then stated in 2018 that she was one of over 100 female gymnasts who accused team doctor Larry Nassar of sexual misconduct. Simone has been also diagnosed with ADHD and she has been open and honest about it on her official social media accounts.