Simone Biles Breaks News About Olympics With Hoda Kotb on ‘Today’

Hoda Kotb got a special visit from Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles as she bid farewell to the TODAY family on her last day! As Kotb looked back on her work covering the Olympics over the years during the Jan. 10 “Hodabration,” she was shocked to see Biles walk onto the set, where she broke some big news as a surprise guest.

“I can’t believe you came,” Kotb said, to which Biles responded, “Of course! You showed up and supported me.” Kotb immediately got emotional, crying as she told the athlete, “I watched you grow up. I watched you go to the mountain top. I watched you fall down and get back up again.”

Kotb told Biles that before she became a mother, she hoped her kids would be just like her, as her parents are the example of “how to do things right” when it came to raising children.

It was then that Biles cryptically shared a tantalizing message about her possible future. “Hopefully we’re in LA together, whatever that means,” Biles told Kotb, hinting at the 2028 summer Olympics, to be held in Los Angeles. The iconic gymnast has been keeping her possible Olympic plans to herself, so her little hint about going to L.A. had Kotb crying out, “We broke news on my last day!”

Previously, Biles told Sports Illustrated in its interview for naming her its Sportsperson of the Year that it would have to be “life or death” circumstances for her to consider returning to the Olympics again.

“Because I’ve accomplished so much, there’s almost nothing left to do, rather than to just be snobby and to try again and for what?” she told the outlet in an interview published on Jan. 2. “I’m at a point in my career where I’m humble enough to know when to be done.”

Biles, who is married to Chicago Bears safety Jonathan Owens, continued, “If you go back, you’ll be greedy. Those are the consequences. But that’s also your decision to decide. What sacrifices would be made if I go back now? When you’re younger, it’s like, prom, college. Now it’s like, starting a family, being away from my husband. What’s really worth it?”

Looking back on everything she has accomplished in her athletic career, Biles said she doesn’t think “the reality has set in of what I’ve exactly done in the sport.” She continued, “I can see it, and I hear it from people, and I see a glimpse of it, but the full magnitude I don’t think I’ve realized just yet. I don’t think I’ll realize ’til maybe I retire and look back in a couple years like, damn, she was good. Because I can see that, but I do it every day. So for me, it’s normal.”