Towards the end of a delightful press conference after the United States’s triumph in the gymnastics team final on Tuesday night, a familiar face took the microphone and asked the winners a question. The surprise inquisitor was Aly Raisman, a three-time Olympic gold medallist, one of the greatest US gymnasts of all time.
The second and last Olympics of Raisman’s career was Rio 2016 and it coincided with the emergence of Simone Biles. As the oldest in the squad, Raisman’s age and maturity earned her the affectionate nickname “grandma” from Biles and their teammates. Their triumph in the team competition meant Raisman was the oldest US gymnast to win Olympic gold in history. She was 22 years old.
After holding that record for eight years, Raisman was demoted from first to the fourth on the list on Tuesday. This year’s US team includes three women over the age of 22: the 27-year-old Biles, the 24-year-old Jade Carey and the 23-year-old Jordan Chiles. With Sunisa Lee also 21 years old, four of the five members are over 20.
Over the past few Olympic cycles, women’s artistic gymnastics has changed beyond imagination. After the emergence of the prodigious teenage gymnasts Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci in the 1970s, it was widely believed that female gymnasts peaked in their teenage years and as they continued to mature physically, the prospect of maintaining their complex routines was more remote. But in recent years, the average age of the best competitors has increased and numerous prominent athletes have enjoyed long careers. This theme has only further accelerated in Paris, which has so far been dominated by older gymnasts. This includes the enduring greatness of Biles, who on Thursday became the oldest gymnastics all-around champion since 1952.
While many of Biles’s skills and abilities cannot be replicated, the way she has comported herself throughout her career and attained such longevity will be a significant part of her legacy. As she became a senior gymnast and began to attend the infamous monthly camps held at the ranch of Marta Karolyi, the former US team coordinator, Biles and her coach, Aimee Boorman, quickly understood they would do things their own way. “They used to try to put us in a box and they were like, ‘If you weren’t like this you’re not going to be successful,’” Biles said. “Whenever I came around, it wasn’t really my style. At the ranch [with] Marta, nobody really would talk and laugh and all that stuff. But I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s not how I do gymnastics’.
“So I’m going to continue to do it how I know and how I love because this is the reason why I fell in love with the sport. Once that started changing, and Marta started understanding that, then the girls started showing a little bit more of their personalities. Over the years, we’ve gotten to do that and now it just goes into our longevity as well.”
Throughout her career, Biles has shownit is possible for a gymnast to enjoy their work, embrace a fulfilling life outside the gym and still work at full strength in order to become the best athlete possible. So many talented gymnasts have ended up overtrained and injured as coaches have tried to ensure that they are ready for the Olympics in their teenage years. On her own remarkable trajectory, Biles has shown that it is possible to consistently improve throughout a gymnastics career, gradually gaining new skills. Her longevity has also allowed her to experience significant difficulties, to regroup and come back stronger.
As such a strong, formidable athlete, Biles has helped change the image of gymnasts with the body types that can be successful in the sport and to break down old myths: “It was always, the smaller and lighter you are, especially in women’s gymnastics, the easier gymnastics was,” says the 2014 Commonwealth Games champion Becky Downie. “When you are a child, you have a much smaller, robust body. But then there was that shift. Not just in terms of our sport and funding, but when we saw the rise of the Americans. They were strong, they were muscular, they weren’t really tiny bodied athletes. I think that really created a shift in the sport to be like you actually can be muscly and strong, and actually it’s helpful.”
Biles is not the only older gymnast thriving in Paris. The entire women’s all-around podium on Thursday was a reflection of this shift. At 25 years old, Rebeca Andrade endured three torn anterior cruciate ligaments (ACL) and it is only in her 20s that she has fulfilled her potential, becoming one of the greatest gymnasts of the era behind Biles. Lee, who returned after becoming the 2020 all-around champion to win a stellar bronze medal, is still in remission from a kidney disease. “I think it’s really empowering to know that younger athletes coming up can have a say in the skills that they want to do and the nutrition around how they train and their strength and conditioning,” said Downie. “They’re involved in everything and it’s an athlete-coach partnership rather than a dictatorship and I think that’s why we’re seeing better results and ultimately happier and healthier athletes.”
At 32, Downie will compete in the uneven bars final after scoring the third highest score on the apparatus during the team final. The 28-year-old Elsabeth Black, meanwhile, finished the all-around final as the sixth best gymnast in the world and Jade Barbosa, 33, won bronze with Brazil.
The “grandma” is no longer the anomaly, for these athletes have demonstrated to future generations that with the right care and attention paid to their careers, there are no limits to how long a gymnast can thrive at the highest level.
