Simone Biles Speaks About Education and Social Media Impact

On Thursday, Simone Biles landed in Belize to much fan-fare courtesy the B.T.B. and other local partners. By now you would know that the world’s best gymnast is the adopted daughter of Belizean Nellie Cayetano Biles. And while we may know a lot about her gymnastics feats, we don’t always get to see the star athlete outside of her element. At Thursday’s press conference she spoke about that part of her life that most people don’t see and one thing that she holds dear – education. Biles says she uses social media to give people a look at her life outside the world of sports:

Simone Biles

Simone Biles, Olympian

“I just kinda use it as an outlet for other teens or kids or whoever is watching it to get an in look in my life because they always see me whenever I am competing but they don’t see like my personality whenever I am outside of the gym, so I think it is fun for them to watch that because that is me rather than just on the floor and stuff.”

Reporter

“Little has been said about your education, can you speak about that and in terms of how important that is for you apart from being the world’s best female gymnast?”

Simone Biles

“Yes. Education has always been very important to me and my family. They always say school before gymnastics, which I have. But I did graduate a year and a half ago from high school. And then I took a year off so I can focus on the Olympics and since then everything was so crazy and a whirlwind, I am waiting for everything to slow down to start school again.”

Reporter

“Did you think that coming off Rio that you actually got the rightful accolades that you should have gotten? Or do you think that that was played down a little bit?”

Simone Biles

“No. I think it was pretty good because once we got back to states, we were literally everywhere. And once we turned on the TV we were everywhere and it was kinda crazy seeing that we were everywhere and I just kinda wanted to get a break from myself. Because everywhere I looked it was my face sothat was pretty crazy.”