Olympic gold medalist posted a picture of herself and fellow Team USA gymnastic squad member MyKayla Skinner in the cockpit of a plane before traveling to Japan for the Tokyo 2021 Olympics.
“TOKYO BOUND w/ your new pilots 💙✈️,” Biles wrote on her Instagram. “@TeamUSA is taking the #RoadToTokyo to the skies – next stop, Japan!” she captioned the post.
In the trials, Biles won the all-around with 118.098 points to finish 2.66 ahead of Suni Lee, who finished with 115.832 points. Biles will be the only member of the US Gymnastics team in Tokyo with previous Olympic experience. Lee will be the first Hmong American to compete at the Olympics.
At 24, Biles will be the oldest American women’s gymnast since 26-year-old Annia Hatch and Mohini Bhardwaj, 25, in the 2004 Olympics.
In a July story for WSJ Magazine’s digital issue, she revealed that she “thought [she’d] hit the peak of [her] career” in 2016, after winning four gold medals and one bronze at the Games in Rio de Janeiro.
“I was like, ‘How can I get any better than that?'” She added. “And so I was really nervous walking into the gym.”
She says swapping out her old coaches for new ones helped her to freshen her perspective.
“Now I can enjoy my gymnastics. It’s really up to me. And that probably also comes along with how many titles I’ve won and everything I’ve established,” she told the publication. “It’s like, okay, well, the facts are on the paper. I feel like now I don’t have to prove anything to anybody,” she explained. “I’m trying to level up.”
Biles aspires to be the first woman in more than five decades to win back-to-back Olympic championships,
Team USA also includes Sunisa Lee, Jordan Chiles, Grace McCallum, MyKayla Skinner, and Jade Carey.
