On March 24, 2020, the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games was officially postponed due to the worldwide spread of COVID-19. The Games, originally scheduled for July 24—August 9, will now be held July 23—August 8, 2021—if it happens at all. If the pandemic is still raging next year, the Summer Games will be canceled for only the forth time in modern history, following the cancellation of the 1916, 1940, and 1944 Olympic Games due to WWI and WWII.
A postponed (or canceled) Olympic Games can be devastating for athletes who have spent years training for it, especially since most elite athletes have a brief window of peak performance when their age and experience—physiology and psychology—reach the pinnacle necessary to compete with the world’s best.
Peak performance for female gymnasts comes especially young, which is one reason Simone Biles, the 23-year-old most decorated American gymnast of all time, is so incredible.
Simone Biles, Rio 2016 (Fernando Frazão/Agência Brasil) 
Simone Biles, Rio 2016 (Agência Brasil)
As a casual viewer of the Olympics, I don’t usually recognize elite athletes until they win big on the world stage and reach the household-name status of a Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, or Nadia Comaneci. In 2016, I watched along with millions of others as the U.S. Artistic Gymnastics Team nicknamed the “Final Five” dominated the competition, and Simone Biles became America’s newest Olympic darling—and the first American gymnast to carry the country’s flag in the opening or closing ceremonies since 1936.
By the time she was 19 and winning golds at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, Biles was already the first woman to win three consecutive all-around titles in World Gymnastics Championship history (2013-2015). In 2016 she set another record for most gold medals won by an American female gymnast in a single Olympics, with four golds (Team, All-Around, Vault, and Floor Exercise), and a fifth medal (bronze) on the Balance Beam. Biles took a well-deserved hiatus in 2017, and still managed to co-write a New York Times bestselling autobiography and compete on Dancing With the Stars (she came in 4th).
In 2018, Biles revealed that she also suffered abuse at the hands of former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, who was convicted of sexual assault of minors, after more than 140 female athletes came forward with their allegations. She wore a teal-colored leotard at the 2018 U.S.A. Gymnastics National Championships (where she won five gold medals) in honor of survivors of sexual abuse.
Listing all of Simone Biles’ accomplishments would make this a very long post (her Wikipedia page is long enough!), but her reign is far from over. In 2019 she became the most decorated gymnast in World Championship history, with 25 world medals. She already has four eponymous gymnastics elements (one each on vault and balance beam and two on floor). She was a finalist for Time’s 2016 Person of the Year, won the 2017 ESPY Award for Best Female Athlete, was awarded the Arthur Ashe Courage Award, chosen as ESPN’s most dominant athlete of 2018, and was awarded 2019 AP Female Athlete of the Year (among many other recognitions).
She resumed training for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics in May, after a two-month shutdown due to COVID-19. As recently as last week(!), she debuted a new balance beam dismount that is just as crazy-difficult as the other moves she has originated.
Biles is such an exceptional talent that she is known as the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time). Barring an injury or the cancelation of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, if Simone Biles competes next year, she will only further cement her status as the GOAT—not just for gymnastics, but as one of the greatest athletes of all time, period.
Follow Simone Biles on Instagram, and find out more at simonebiles.com.