On Thursday Sports Illustrated named Olympic gymnast and gold medal winner Simone Biles as the publication’s 2024 Sportsperson of the Year.
This comes after Biles dominated at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, winning two individual gold medals and a silver along with helping Team USA to gold in the all-around competition.
Biles, 27, overcame hurdles both mental and physical in order to achieve the top of her sport in 2024.
“Simone Biles is Sports Illustrated’s 2024 Sportsperson of the Year because she won gold, and then another gold, and then another,” the article reads. “Because she changed the face of her sport and the conversations around athletes in general; because she continues to speak out about issues that matter to her. And perhaps most of all because after she wondered aloud … whether she was about to relive the darkest period of her career, she took a deep breath, she saluted the judges and she broke into a run.”
The dark period the article refers to is Biles’ time in the 2020 Olympics, when she contracted a case of the twisties, AKA gymnastics vertigo, and lost her bearings in the air during her vault at the team final, then withdrew after the event.
In what could have been a derailment of her Olympic career, Biles bounced back, and then some, in Paris.
“It’s crazy,” Biles told SI, “That I have the privilege and I have the mental strength to accomplish my wildest dreams.”
Click here to read to full article.
Photos: Simone Biles leads USA in women’s gymnastics qualifying at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris
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