“I’m not saying that [people] scream and line up like I’m Taylor Swift, [but] I still get a lot of attention. When five people come up to me and they’re rushing for a photo, I just get a little flustered. My anxiety kicks in.”
Simone Biles a.k.a The GOAT sat down with Vanity Fair to discuss all things from fame, Taylor Swift, the Paris Olympics and her marriage to NFL player Jonathan Owens.
The pair met on the invite only dating app Raya in 2020 telling the publication she “had just broken up [with someone] and my friend was like, ‘Get on Raya, get on Raya,'” Biles says revealing her “guard went immediately up”.
However within the first week Biles matched with Owens and they have been inseparable ever since.
“The second week I met him in person,” she says, “and the rest is history. We were hooked.”
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Owens then adds that it was in fact Biles who initiated the relationship by messaging him first and that he did not know who the four-time Olympic gold medalist was at the time.
“A lot of people don’t believe me when I say I had no clue,” Owens adds. But once he found her on Instagram and discovered her millions of followers, “I was like, man, she got a lot of followers, she must be pretty good.”
This is not the first time Owens has insisted that he didn’t know who Biles – the most decorated gymnast in history – was. In April 2023, Owens received backlash for the same statement on The Pivot podcast.
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The Tokyo Olympics catapulted her into the limelight around the world, even more so than she already was but Biles says her “anxiety kicks in” when people recognize her.
“I think everyone wants to be famous, and then when it happens, you almost hit a wall and you have an identity crisis. You’re like, Am I made out for this? Why did I wish for this?” She adds, “I’m not saying that [people] scream and line up like I’m Taylor Swift, [but] I still get a lot of attention. When five people come up to me and they’re rushing for a photo, I just get a little flustered.”
Swift and Biles sparked a lot of attention when they both supported their respective partners as WAGS during the Packers and Chiefs games in December, 2023.
“It’s a little bit weird because I’m like, ‘This is definitely not my gig,’” she says of seeing posters with her face on them at the game. However, Swift and Biles were seated in different sections so “there was no selfie,” and she’s “not sure they were exactly happy that the Packers were beating them.”
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Biles also opened up about life after the Tokyo Olympics where she withdrew from the team competition, citing mental health concerns and “the twisties”, which in gymnastics is a disconnect between the mind and body that causes the gymnast to lose track when they’re in the air. Her decision to put herself and her health first brought in a lot of criticism from around the world calling Biles a “quitter”. But the experience turned Biles into a mental health advocate, something she still is today.
“I wish I could sit here and tell you it was glorious. When I took a break after 2016, I had the time of my life. I was doing anything and everything. But after 2020, it was kind of depressing until I started therapy and got help. I felt like a failure. Even though I was empowering so many people and speaking out about mental health, every time I talked about my experience in Tokyo—because it obviously didn’t go the way that I had planned—it stung a little bit. But all in all, it was the best decision.”
As for if she will be attending the upcoming Paris Olympics, there is no definitive answer yet.
“If I don’t make it to Paris, it won’t absolutely crush me.”
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