Four-time Olympic champion Simone Biles has cemented her name in gymnastics history as one of the greatest athletes. She dominated the field since her 2013 debut in the senior elite division. By 2015, she became the most decorated gymnast in World Championship history.

But her road to success had a rocky beginning. At age 6, Ron and Nellie Biles, her maternal grandparents, adopted her and her little sister Adria. The gymnast had been bouncing around the foster care system before her grandparents took her in.

Simone Biles was separated from her birth mother

Gymnastics legend Simone Biles narrated in her memoir, Courage to Soar, how she and her three siblings were born to Shanon Biles, living in Columbus, Ohio. But Shanon battled with drug and alcohol addictions and couldn’t properly care for the kids. Biles’ earliest memories remain of her going hungry and struggling with food. 

One day, their neighbors called social services after often watching the kids play on the street without supervision. At the time, Biles was only three, with her little sister Adria barely six months old. However, her older two siblings were much older and had a lot of memories of their birth mother. They stayed with a foster family for a while before Biles’ grandparents took them in until Shanon could get better.

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When Shanon first visited the four siblings, she started the conversation about reuniting the family. The gymnastics GOAT had grown attached to living with her grandparents but didn’t wish to separate from her elder siblings, who longed to go with their birth mother. So they all flew back to Ohio and lived with their foster family until social services deemed Shanon fit to care for them.

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Despite the best efforts, though, things didn’t go as planned. Biles explained in her book, “We never did go back to living with Shanon because she kept failing her drug tests. The social worker told her that if she could just pass a few tests in a row, they’d let us move back in with her. But she couldn’t seem to stay sober.”

Their grandparents adopted Biles and her sister

In the end, Simone Biles and her sister Adria returned to Spring, Texas, to live with Ron and Nellie for good. Ron’s sister, Aunt Harriet, adopted their older siblings, who wished to stay close to Shanon in Cleveland. Their biological mother, Shannon, however, didn’t take the permanent separation well.

“When we signed the [adoption] papers, it was like my dad flipped a switch on me – no communication, don’t call, and don’t visit. That’s how it was at the beginning,” Shanon told the Daily Mail. “I was hard-headed, I didn’t care, screaming,’“I want to see my kids. Why you doing this to me?’”

But with time, Shanon understood it was in the best interest of her kids. “I didn’t understand it at the time, but years later, I understood why. I had to deal with me first,” she continued. Shanon remains grateful to her father, especially his wife Nellie, who agreed to raise the little girls having no blood relations with her. Biles has also described in the past how her adoption changed her life.

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