Summary
- Simone Biles Rising gives an intimate look at the world of elite gymnastics, showcasing Simone’s comeback journey to the Paris 2024 Olympics.
- The documentary features candid discussions on abuse scandals in the sport, with Simone and others speaking out as survivors.
- Interviews, personal insights, and competition footage combine to capture the inspiring story of Simone Biles with a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score.
The Netflix docuseries Simone Biles Rising focuses on the decorated Olympic champion while also featuring other gymnasts to provide commentary on her and the sport of gymnastics. Simone Biles Rising follows the athlete through her comeback journey to the Paris 2024 Olympics after Simone withdrew from competitions in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics to prioritize her mental health and physical safety. She is candid about her experiences and feelings, not shying away from difficult topics and emotional reveals in Simone Biles Rising. The documentary doesn’t just showcase Simone, but it gives outsiders a look into the world of elite gymnastics.
This world is a complicated one, with years of abuse scandals, most notably with former team doctor Larry Nassar and former national team coaches Martha and Bela Karolyi. Simone speaks out in the documentary as a survivor of their abuse, along with many others across generations. Sports docuseries have been a big success for Netflix, and Simone Biles Rising is no exception, holding a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score. With a mixture of interviews, intimate looks at Simone’s life outside of competition, and footage of said competitions, Simone Biles Rising does a great job of capturing her experience and story.
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5 Betty Okino
1992 Olympic Bronze Medalist
Today, the United States women’s artistic gymnastics team is known as a powerhouse. However, it took time for Team USA to reach the top of the podium. Eastern European countries dominated the gymnastics scene, with 1984 representing a shift when Mary Lou Retton became the first American female gymnast to win the individual all-around gold medal at the Olympics. However, it wasn’t until 2012 that a Black woman won the competition. 20 years before that, in 1992, Olympian Betty Okino was a trailblazer for Black female gymnasts.
Okino and Dominique Dawes became the first two Black female American Olympic gymnasts at the 1992 Barcelona Summer Games. Before the Olympics, Okino became the first Black woman of any nationality to win multiple individual gymnastic World Championship medals, winning a silver medal for uneven bars and a bronze medal for balance beam. Okino excelled in those events, earning an eponymous skill in each. Though she was injured leading up to the 1992 Olympics, she was still named to the team, helping them win bronze, their first team medal in a non-boycotted Olympic Games.
In Simone Biles Rising, Okino spoke about her experience as one of the first major Black female gymnasts, particularly with people’s expectations of how her hair should look. Despite competing 20 years apart, Okino also related to Simone as a gymnast of the Karolyi era, which she called the “old world.” Their method included seeing how hard they could push a gymnast until they broke. Having grown up in this system, Simone and others were used to competing through physical injuries, but the twisties were another story. As Okino explained, Simone could’ve died if she competed in 2020.
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Following the 1992 Olympics, Okino retired from gymnastics and pursued acting, appearing in multiple television shows. In 2002, Okino was inducted into the USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame and is considered a legend of the sport. She currently resides in California and teaches dance, choreography, and artistry as part of the USA Gymnastics National Staff. Okino also owns and operates Betty O Choreo, providing gymnastics camps, clinics, choreography, and activewear. Like many former professional athletes, Okino is also a motivational speaker.
4 Svetlana Boginskaya
3-Time Olympic Champion
The only non-American Olympic gymnast featured in Simone Biles Rising is Svetlana Boginskaya. She has the rare experience of having competed at three Olympic Games for three different flags due to the breakup of the Soviet Union. Born in Belarus, Boginskaya competed for the USSR in 1988, the Unified Team in 1992, and Belarus in 1996. Boginskaya earned four Olympic medals in her first Games in 1988; gold for team and vault, silver for floor exercise, and bronze for all-around. She won her fifth medal in 1992, gold for the Unified Team.
After the 1992 Olympics, Boginskaya retired but made a comeback in 1995, when she moved to Houston to train with the Karolyis. That year, she won silver in the all-around at the European Championships. At the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Boginskaya was one of the older gymnasts, and she permanently retired afterward. In 2005, Boginskaya was inducted into the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame and remains active as a consulting coach. She was famously the coach of Oksana Chusovitina, her former teammate, and the only gymnast to compete in eight Olympic Games.
Sveltana Boginskaya led Belarus to a sixth-place finish in the 1996 Olympics team competition, their best finish in history.
As someone who’s made an Olympic gymnastics comeback and a former Karolyi student, it made sense for Boginskaya to appear in Simone Biles Rising. The gymnast specifically spoke about the pressure of the media and how it can break people down. Though Boginskaya didn’t reach the same level of fame as Biles and competed in the pre-social media age, she was famously painted as a rival of former American gymnast Kim Zmeskal. Boginskaya noted that while the media may paint everything as easy for Simone, she must have some self-doubt, which Simone herself confirmed throughout the docuseries.
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3 Aly Raisman
3-Time Olympic Champion
Aly Raisman is one of the most famous and decorated gymnasts of her time, as well as a former teammate of Simone’s. With six medals (three gold, two silver, and one bronze), she is the third-most decorated American gymnast in Olympic history behind Biles and Shannon Miller. Raisman competed in the 2012 London and 2016 Rio Olympics, serving as the USA team captain for both tournaments. Both teams won gold in the team finals, with her third gold coming on floor exercise in 2012. Raisman also has four World Championship medals from the 2010, 2011, and 2015 tournaments.
Raisman took some time away from gymnastics following the 2012 Olympics and began training again in 2014. After controversially losing a bronze medal tie-break in the 2012 Olympic all-around competition, she won the silver medal in 2016. In January 2020, Raisman announced her retirement. Outside gymnastics, as a survivor, Raisman has become a vocal advocate for mental health, body positivity, and sexual abuse prevention. In 2024, she published her first children’s book, From My Head to My Toes, to teach children consent and bodily autonomy, and began her career as a broadcast analyst.
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As a close friend of Simone’s, it was only natural that Aly played a role in Simone Biles Rising. Simone talked about Aly being her “rock” in Rio as the older, more experienced gymnast. Despite Aly being retired, the two are still close today, and Aly is a proud fan of Simone’s. In the docuseries, she spoke about Simone’s amazing body awareness, which is part of why, in Simone’s words, it would have been “stupid” for her to compete with the twisties in Tokyo.
|
Aly Raisman’s Olympic Medals |
||
|---|---|---|
|
Medal |
Event |
Year |
|
Gold |
Team |
2012 |
|
Gold |
Floor |
2012 |
|
Gold |
Team |
2016 |
|
Silver |
All-around |
2016 |
|
Silver |
Floor |
2016 |
|
Bronze |
Balance Beam |
2012 |
2 Dominique Dawes
1996 Olympic Champion
As aforementioned, Dominique Dawes was one of the first Black American female Olympic gymnasts. She made her Olympic debut at the 1992 Games and is one of the few gymnasts who medaled at three separate ceremonies, Biles being another. Dawes had a long, celebrated career and was a member of Team USA for 10 years. In addition to the three team medals she won at the Olympics, Dawes also won bronze in floor exercise at the 1996 Atlanta Games, beating out her teammate with whom she shared a name, Dominique Moceanu.
As part of the 1996 “Magnificent Seven” team, Dawes became the first Black female gymnast to win an Olympic gold medal. She retired from gymnastics after her third Olympics in 2000 and pursued a career in acting and modeling, appearing in Prince and Missy Elliott music videos. Dawes even briefly appeared on Broadway in a revival of Grease. Like many former gymnasts, she was an Olympic commentator and owns the Dominque Dawes Gymnastics & Ninja Community, in Maryland, where she prioritizes children’s mental and physical health. Dawes is in the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame.
In 2010, Dominique Dawes and the 2000 USA Olympics women’s gymnastics team was awarded with a bronze medal after the International Olympic COmmittee stripped China of their medal for having an underage competitor.
As a gym owner committed to changing gymnastics culture, Dawes was open in Simone Biles Rising about how toxic it was when she was competing. She shared memories of coaches pushing her feet until her bones popped out because she was flat-footed. The gymnasts tend to be older now, with 27-year-old Simone Biles even nicknaming the 2024 Olympic team the “Golden Girls” because they’re the oldest team in USA gymnastics history. However, as Dawes noted,
“
We were kids back then, and we were supposed to do as we were told. They thought that is what it takes to build an Olympic champion or to build a college-scholarship athlete. And I will say, that’s how you rip down a human being.
”
1 Joscelyn Roberson
Simone’s Teammate
Simone’s teammate, Joscelyn Roberson, was featured throughout Simone Biles Rising in both interviews and practice footage. Unlike the rest of the gymnasts who were interviewed for the Netflix documentary, Roberson is still currently competing. Like Biles, Roberson is from Texas. In 2023, a year after she became age-eligible for senior competition, she started training at World Champions Centre, the gymnastics club owned by Simone’s parents, Ron and Nellie Biles. Beyond Biles and Roberson, it’s also where Olympians Jordan Chiles and Mélanie de Jesus dos Santos train.
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It was a breakthrough year for Roberson, who got named to the senior national team for the first time. At the Pan American Championships, Roberson won individual floor gold and silver medals on the balance beam along with the team gold. She represented the United States at the 2023 World Championship, where they won gold once again, though she was unfortunately injured before the vault final, for which she had qualified. After an impressive performance at Olympic trials, Roberson was an alternate at the 2024 Olympic Games. She committed to the University of Arkansas Gymnastics team for 2025.
In Simone Biles Rising, Simone spoke about her slow journey back to training. At first, she’d come to the gym every few months to practice skills on the trampoline but was able to return in time for the 2023 competition year. Simone credits her teammates like Joscelyn with helping her not give up, even though she wanted to. Roberson shared that the woman often considered the “G.O.A.T.” (greatest of all time) of gymnastics sometimes forgets how amazing she is. With details like this, Simone Biles Rising made her comeback even more impressive.
Source: NBC
Simone Biles: Rising (2024)
After stepping away from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics due to mental health struggles, Simone Biles embarks on a transformative journey. The docuseries follows her as she overcomes past traumas, rebuilds her gymnastics skills, and prepares for a triumphant return to the Olympic stage in Paris.
- Release Date
- July 17, 2024
- Seasons
- 1
