Dominique Dawes Weighs in on Simone Biles' Olympic Future (Exclusive)
Simone Biles is an Olympic legend who doesn't have anything left to prove. But will she compete in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris after winning seven medals in the last two Olympics? PopCulture.com recently caught up with legendary Olympic gymnast Dominique Dawes who shared her thoughts on what Biles is going to do next when it comes to her Olympic career.
"Can she come back? She could probably come back for a third and a fourth Olympics," Dawes exclusively told PopCulture.com "The level of difficulty that she's done, she could water down and still make another Olympic team. Will she do it? I don't know. I'm sure she's got a very packed schedule. She might want to move on with her life. She might want to get married. She might want to have a family, however, there [Oksana Aleksandrovna Chusovitina] that's out there. I think it's her eighth Olympic games from the area in Russia. And so maybe Simone does come back, even married. And even after having a child. Who knows."
If Biles does compete in the 2024 Olympics, she will be 27 years old which might seem old in the Olympic world, but as Dawes mentioned, Chusovitina competed in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics at the age of 46. Considering how dominant Biles has been in her career, competing in eight Olympic Games is not out of the question.
But while Biles didn't win a gold medal in Tokyo, she did impress everyone with how she handled herself while battling the twisties. Biles only competed in one event, the balance beam, and earned a bronze medal. She also won a silver medal for the team competition. "I think she handled it all very classy," Dawes said. "I will say it was very ballsy that she was doing interviews with a goat and that she was even wearing a goat at one competition on her leotard. I'm like, 'Whoa, like pressure.' And then at the Olympic games, there was a lot of things that happened. Many of the things occurred behind the scenes that we were not privy to, and she made the best decision for herself. And so I'm very proud of her. She was able to listen to her heart and do what was best for her, safest for her physically as well as mentally.
"But what I loved is when there was the team competition, she was on the sideline, cheering everyone on and giving everyone high fives and big hugs and truly being an amazing teammate, amazing cheerleader and amazing fan for team USA to bring home a silver medal."