Simone Biles puts back gymnastics competition ahead of the 2024 Olympics

Simone Biles will compete again for the first time in almost two years.

The 26-year-old Olympic gold medalist will compete in the US Classic, which takes place near Chicago on Saturday, August 5. USA Gymnastics announced on Wednesday, June 28, that Biles will be part of the women’s field for the event, which will be held at NOW Arena in the suburb of Hoffman Estates.

The event marks Biles’ first appearance in competition since July 2021, when she withdrew from the team finals at the Tokyo Olympics after developing “the twisties,” a phenomenon gymnasts experience when they lose control of their bodies while spinning through the air. .

“I didn’t have a bad performance and quit,” Biles wrote via Instagram after her departure made headlines. “I made a lot of poor performances during my career and finished the competition. I was just so lost [that] my safety was at stake as well as a team medal.”

Biles made the decision to exit the team final after her jump rotation, in which she slipped and landed on her knees. Her teammates — Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles And Grace McCallum – went on to win the silver medal in the all-around team competition.

Biles later withdrew from the individual all-around, floor exercise, vault and uneven bars finals, but competed in the balance beam final, winning bronze. Lee, 20, won gold in the individual all-around and bronze in the uneven bars while Jade Carey took home the gold for her floor exercise and MyKayla Skinner won silver for the vault.

Last year, Biles hinted that she wasn’t ready to hang up her leotard, despite the difficulties she faced in Tokyo.

“Technically, if you ask someone in the US who watches an American gymnast, I’m probably already outdated, but I really feel like going to Tokyo, I reached my peak,” she shared. USA today in March 2022. “Really, I thought I had reached my peak in 2016, at the age of 19. And every time I came back to the sport I thought, ‘I can never get better than I was because someone told me this was the best I was going to get.’”

She went on to say that she has “no regrets” about taking some time off, but she still wants to see what she can do. “You just have to get those negative views out there and just keep going,” she explained. “I want to see how much I am capable of, how talented I can be. And that’s why I came back [for 2020], just so as not to regret when I look back in 10 years. So now I can really say I don’t regret it, but maybe I can push it a bit more to see.

At the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, Biles won four gold medals, victorious in the team all-around, individual all-around, floor exercise, and vault. She also took home a bronze medal on balance beam that year.

Her bronze and silver medals at the 2020 Olympics took her to a total of seven, tying with Shannon Miller for most Olympic medals won by an American gymnast. With 25 World Championship medals, she is the most decorated gymnast in the history of the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships. Last year, chairman Joe Biden awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.