Legendary gymnast Simone Biles has been nominated for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award. Other nominees for the award are star athletes Aitana Bonmati, Erling Haaland, Novak Djokovic, Siya Kolisi, and Max Verstappen.
The 2023 BBC Sports Personality of the Year will be the 70th edition of the award ceremony. On December 5, the publication opened its voting gates on its website. The polls will close on 12 December 2023, 22:00 GMT.
Simone Biles was the only gymnast to make it to the list of six athletes that BBC released. After her two-year mental health break, the four-time Olympic gymnast made an impressive comeback this year. She made her way to the 2023 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships and won five medals.
Biles won four world championship gold medals in the team, all-around, balance beam, and floor exercise events. She also won a silver medal in the vault event. Her impressive performance made her the gymnast with the most number of World Championship medals in the world (30). She is also the gymnast with the highest number of World Championship gold medals (23)..
This year, Biles became the only gymnast to represent the United States for the sixth time in the World Championship forum. She made her debut in the world championship in 2013 where she bagged two gold medals, a silver medal, and a bronze medal.
Simone Biles struggled with mental health issues during the 2020 Summer Olympics
While performing at the pandemic-delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Simone Biles shared that she felt a disconnect between her mind and body.The experience prompted Biles to address her mental well-being. She subsequently announced her break from gymnastics during the 2021 Summer Olympics. In an interview with NBC Olympics, Biles revealed what affected her to take a break. She said:
“[Being the face of the Games] really didn’t affect me, it was just what I wanted to accomplish and what I wanted to do, and how everybody was like, ‘you’re the glue to the team,’ and that really stressed me out because I never thought of it that way.”
Biles added:
“But then whenever it’s being shoved down your throat it’s just like, ‘So then if I have a bad practice, then the girls are off.’ It’s just hard.”
Simone Biles took a break from professiona; gymnastics for two full years before returning to the sport in 2023 at the US Classic.
