Olympian Simone Biles is the most decorated American gymnast in history, and while it may seem she has the world in the palm of her hand, family troubles have begun rearing their ugly head.
The 4-foot-8 Houston powerhouse returned from the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris with three gold medals and one silver. However, back on American soil Biles faces personal challenges that overshadow her athletic success.
The first challenge comes from her biological mother, Shanon Biles, who recently sat with the Daily Mail for a tell-all interview about their estranged relationship.
In the interview, Shanon claims that her daughter wants nothing to do with her after being given up for adoption as a small child.
Shanon has been candid about the reason she lost custody of her children: substance abuse.
Her addiction was so severe that it led to the loss of custody of all four of her children at the time — Ashley, now 34; Tevin, now 29; Simone, now 27; and Adria, now 25. The children were placed in foster care and later adopted.
Simone was 3 years old, and Adria was an infant when they entered the system. Three years later, in 2000, they were adopted by their grandparents, Ronald and Nellie Biles. Shanon’s two elder children, Tevin and Ashley, went to live with her aunt, Ronald’s sister, in Cleveland.
Shanon blames her father for not allowing her to maintain a relationship with her children, including the world-renowned gymnast and her younger sister.
Over the years, Shanon has reconnected with some of her children but not the young gymnastics star, who was the subject of her interview.
However, her desire to reconnect with Simone has not been well received by the public.
Critics on social media accused Shanon of trying to steal the spotlight from her daughter, who recently carried Team USA to victory.
In her interview, the mom expressed her longing for reconciliation. However, many online commenters were unsympathetic, suggesting that Shanon’s motivations might be financially driven.
One person tweeted, “Shannon Biles is a parasite. She gave up her daughter. She isn’t Simone’s mother. Period.”
Adding to the family drama, another sibling has come forward. Micah Biles-Walker, Simone’s younger sister, has taken to social media to defend their mother against online critics. Micah, who says she is three years younger than the women’s gymnastics Team USA captain, shared a video aimed at those who have harshly judged her mother and her relationship with her children — particularly Simone.
Micah, 24, rushed to her mother’s defense. She maintained that Shanon, who had four more children after Adria (Micah, Mariah, Taran, and Shania), is not a bad person.
In a TikTok video captioned, “I have my own feelings about my sister but we not gone do too Much on Shanon Biles. will take it there with everybody on this planet about my mama . #simonebiles,” Micah vented for nearly four minutes. The clip was captured by The Neighborhood Talk, in which Micah states, “I want to come to this internet and defend my mom because she might not be everything we expected her to be, but at the end of the day, she’s still a work in progress, and we give her that.”
“Simone chose not to have a relationship with my mom, and that’s fine. That was her choice,” Micah continued, adding that she herself didn’t develop a proper relationship with Shanon until she was 17 due to her mother’s addiction.
According to Micah, due to Shanon’s drug addiction, she was unable to consistently care for Micah and her siblings since she was around 9 years old.
“It was on and off because she was still dealing with what she was dealing with at the time,” said Micah, adding, “But I’m not going to let y’all get on this internet and bash my mom, or say anything bad, or anything of that sort because she’s not a bad person. She’s done nothing to Simone. Life happened to her.”
According to Micah, there are three sets of kids. Ashley has her own father. Tevin, Simone and Adria have their own dad, Kevin Clemons, who also wants to establish a relationship with Simone. Micah, Mariah, Taron Biles-Walker, and Shania Biles-Walker, all have their own father.
Micah reiterated that Simone’s circumstances changed for the better when she was adopted. “From 2 years old and up, she was good,” said Micah.
The 24-year-old showed empathy for her mother’s struggles, saying that “she tried,” and revealed that Shanon has been attempting to reconnect with all of her children, but her attempts to reach Simone have been to no avail.
Fans weighed in on the sister’s clapback and how drugs complicated the relationships and almost destroyed the family bonds.
“This is a prime example of consequences for ya actions and how it effects your kids and will affect u later,” one person commented on Instagram.
Another person wrote, “She’s done nothing to Simone’ except not raise her kid.”
“Forgiveness doesn’t mean reconciliation,” one other person wrote. “BYE She wasn’t with Simone flipping in the gym.”
As another quipped, “She took after the mother we see. Yall doing too much. We never heard from yall before.”
A fourth comment read, “It’s three sides to every story…. And somewhere in between it all an abandoned child has the right to feel how she feels.”
The complexities of the Biles family dynamics are further highlighted by the different sets of children and their relationships with their parents.
While Simone has spoken openly about her abandonment issues and how they have contributed to her struggles with anxiety, she has chosen to maintain close ties only with certain family members, primarily those who raised her.
Simone has previously discussed her challenging early years in her Facebook Watch series “Simone vs Herself,” where she recalled being focused on food due to a lack of it during her childhood. She also remembered her mother seemingly favoring a cat over her own children, stating, “She always fed it, but she never fed us.”
As of now, Simone maintains relationships with her older siblings, the sister she grew up with, and her grandparents. Her connection with her younger siblings, however, remains unclear, with Micah confirming that her relationship with Simone is currently estranged.
Micah says she just wanted to be in her sister’s life: “Because I already tried, and y’all tried to fake ass bash me for that. So I’m not going to do that because y’all trying to make it seem like, ‘Oh, I’m just jealous’ or whatever. But at the end of the day, I just wanted my sister.”
