Sports Illustrated names Simone Biles 2024 ‘Sportsperson of the Year’

You can never accuse Sports Illustrated of conforming when it comes to their Sportsperson of the Year award. And they proved that once again in 2024 by bestowing the honor upon USA gymnast Simone Biles.

The decision to name Biles as the Sportsperson of the Year is far less controversial than last year, when SI gave the award to Deion Sanders who had just finished a 4-8 season in his first year as head coach at the University of Colorado.

However, it is a shift from the conventional wisdom that saw pretty much every other outlet select Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark as the defining figure in sports for 2024.

Simone Biles is SI’s 2024 Sportsperson of the Year ⭐ https://t.co/Fm4hAkpY45 pic.twitter.com/JYyp8OKG6V

— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) January 2, 2025

Sports Illustrated noted not just Biles’ gold medal winning performances in Paris, but her comeback from the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo when she suffered from the twisties and was unable to fully compete. That made her gold medal on the vault, all-around, and team events all the more meaningful.

Simone Biles is Sports Illustrated’s 2024 Sportsperson of the Year because she won gold, and then another gold, and then another; 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 to Chiles 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. 

Clark was a popular pick because of her transformational impact on women’s basketball and just how much her presence changed the game for both the collegiate and professional games. The NCAA Women’s Tournament championship game between Iowa and South Carolina was watched by a record 18.7 million viewers. She was seen as a slam dunk choice by Time Magazine and others, and maybe in waiting until the new year to unveil the award, perhaps Sports Illustrated wanted to make sure another athlete was honored for 2024.

That’s certainly nothing to take away from Simone Biles, who cemented herself as the greatest gymnast in history during the 2024 Paris Olympics with an incredible comeback story. And her starpower certainly helped turn the narrative around for the Olympics in 2024 as the ratings and overall interest in the event bounced back after a downturn.