AQUILA
PUSHING THE LIMITS OF SPORT:
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Simone Biles
imone Biles may have only emerged on the world stage in 2013 as an aspiring 15 year old. Nevertheless, when she did, she wholeheartedly erupted onto it, and as such it is no surprise that she has fast become a household name in the six years since. Not too long ago, if you had asked a passerby to name a gymnast, it would have been highly likely that they would have struggled to recall any, or, if they were to have managed, that they would have cited the likes of Olga Korbut or Nadia Comaneci. It cannot be denied that these are great gymnasts. However, gymnastics has changed a lot since then, and they could be compared to relics of the gymnastics world, wellloved but sitting on a dusty shelf of champions gone by. As the sport is stepping ever more into the spotlight, current day
gymnasts (including Biles herself) are becoming gradually more well known. Biles is without doubt one of the catalysts of this change.
Biles has broken a myriad of records at both a national and international level, and in doing so has surpassed gymnastic legends who have come before her time and time again. For example, in August last year Simone competed in the U.S championships. For any non-gymnastics fans (which I am assuming is the majority of people reading this) the USA has, in the last decade, become the most dominant nation in women’s gymnastics. Of course this means that in the USA, the boss of the women’s gymnastics world, there is a very strong field of athletes. Therefore you would obviously expect it to be an arduous task to win even one medal at the national championships. Biles won
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five medals. And they were all gold, making her the first female US gymnast to become the champion on every event since Dominique Dawes did so in 1994. What makes this feat even more phenomenal is that in the all around competition (where scores on all four apparatus are added together) Biles had a 6.55 edge on the second place gymnast, Morgan Hurd. In a sport where the difference between gold or silver can be a mere bent leg or slight stumble (often meaning there can be just one tenth of a point between first and second place) a lead of 6.55 is monumental! Other records Biles has broken include the record for the most world championship gold medals for any female gymnast ever, with an extraordinary 14 world titles to her name. She really is pushing the boundaries of the sport. It goes without saying that Biles must have an extraordinary body. Despite being only 4’8” (1.42m) she is packed with power, and is pushing the boundaries of what is physically possible for the human body. This is demonstrated nowhere better than in the new vault skill she created which is, since the 2018 world championships last November, named after Biles. In vault, the gymnast runs down a 25m runway, jumps off of a springboard onto the vault, before then completing a series of twists
