Months ahead of the Tokyo Olympics, gymnast Simone Biles has debuted a new accessory, posting a photo on Tuesday confirming that she appears to have recently pierced her sternum. The gold medalist used Instagram to share a selfie in which she wore a v-neck black top that showed off the piercing, smiling as she held her hair with one hand and her phone with the other.
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“kinda unbothered,” Biles dubbed the snap.
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The 22-year-old’s sternum piercing made its first appearance on her Instagram page earlier this month when she shared a photo of herself standing on a bench in a wood-paneled room and wearing black jeans, black ankle boots and a black v-neck crop top.
“my doctor says I need glasses,” she wrote.
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Biles is currently preparing for the 2020 Olympics, which would be her second trip to the competition. She previously competed in Rio di Janeiro in 2016 where she won individual gold medals in the all-around, vault and floor, competitions bronze in balance beam and gold as part of the United States team. She is the most decorated American gymnast and the world’s third most decorated gymnast.
Last week, Biles showed off a new vault she is working on, performing a Yurchenko double pike and captioning the clip “2020” along with several eye emojis and a question mark. The Yurchenko double pike has never been performed by a female gymnast in competition, meaning Biles could make history should she choose to execute it in Tokyo. The vault gets its name from Soviet gymnast Natalia Yurchenko, who pioneered that approach to the vault in the ’80s. In Biles’ video, she lands feet-first in a foam pit, and a fully rotated landing is paramount for the move, as failure to fully rotate could result in Biles landing on her head or neck.
2020 ๐๐๐ ? pic.twitter.com/3QDjSOPYbH
โ Simone Biles (@Simone_Biles) February 3, 2020
In October, Biles told PEOPLE that she is taking things “one step at a time” ahead of potential competition in Tokyo.
“Right now, my mindset is to kind of take everything one day at a time, one step at a time because you never know what will happen and you can’t take any training for granted,” she said. “Kind of live in the moment.”
Photo Credit: Getty / Thomas Kienzle