Everything comes at a cost. For Adria Biles, the stardom of her elder sister Simone Biles cost her a budding gymnastics career. Following Simone’s footsteps, Adria started her training in gymnastics as a 9-year-old. Showing the colors of the Biles lineage, by 2015, she was competing at Level 9, also referred to as the junior elite level. But the shadow of her elder sister ran after her every time she was up on the mats. At one point, that understandably became too much. So Adria quit. That was back in 2016. But, the sport of gymnastics never left her.

In 2022, Adria was asked if she regrets her decision. Her reply was “I do.” Indeed, gymnastics was deeply ingrained in her, right from the days of playful jumps and tumbles. “When we were little kids, we’d stand on a railing on the second floor of our house, then jump off onto the couch down below on the first floor. She’d [Simone Biles] go first, and I’d follow. We were both gymnasts, so we were always trying things around the house,” Adria had told last year. Even today, she does not miss a chance to rekindle the gymnastic memories.

On June 8, Adria Biles shared an Instagram story recollecting her bygone days as a gymnast. It shows her younger self attempting a swing down on a balance beam, donning a pink leotard. But, failing in the end, she topples down from the gymnastics apparatus onto the landing mat. Adria captions the story, ‘me and swingdowns,‘ with a handshake emoji, as though humorously taking a jibe at herself for ‘nailing’ the step.

Moreover, the sight of Adria falling flat on the mat seemed hilarious to the ones around. The person shooting the video and a few others can be heard bursting into laughter. Whereas the gymnasts visible in the video cover their mouths in surprise. However, for Adria this was a rather ‘humbling athletic moment,’ as seen in the sticker she adds to her story. Despite keeping the sport so close to her heart, Adria does not seem to step into the shoes of Simone once again. She might not have forgotten the comparison she had to face. Even Simone Biles attested to that.

In an interview in 2022, referring to her sister, Simone had said, “She quit because of the pressure, and everybody compared her to me…Whenever she went to competitions like ‘Oh, her sister always wins, she always wins, that’s not fair’. So she quit.” Therefore, Adria unleases her gymnastic self only through such throwback clips and playful stunts, something that she has done on a few occasions recently.

March, 2024: Adria took to her Instagram stories to show off her skills right from the mats of the training arena of Simone Biles, the World Champions Center. She executed a flawless 360-degree standing backflip, astonishing the crowd present there. “Have to make sure I still got it every once in a while,” Adria had stated in her story.

May 2024: This time, the occasion was more casual. On her Instagram story, Adria was seen on a beach. Along with a friend, she performed a side-by-side flip. “the urge to always flip,” Adria had written, once again expressing her attachment to the sport. In another Instagram story, where Adria took part in a media-sharing trend titled, “Everybody add a flip.” There she added a double backflip video on the floor while writing, “I miss it everyday.”

Despite leaving something so dear to her because of Simone, she never left the side of her elder sister.

Adria Biles and Simone are two peas in a pod

Apart from their love for gymnastics, the two sisters have a lot that binds them together. They bear a striking resemblance to each other. Also, just two years apart, the two are very close emotionally. Especially Adria, who is a definite Simone Biles loyalist and looks at her as a motherly figure since their days in the foster care. With that twining bond, Adria has openly vouched for her a couple of times.

Around the start of this year, Adria shared in her story a throwback picture of her sister from their childhood. She called Simone ‘her rock’ in its caption. She had also once remarked that Simone is an inspirational figure in her life. “She’s also kind and humble, and I’m so proud to have her as my sister,” and “I look up to her in every way,” said the younger one to ESPN.

Also, right from when Simone won an Olympic bronze, to deciding to withdraw from the Tokyo Olympics or even attain her recent Xfinity achievement, Adria has supported her sister throughout. Therefore, the two sisters are a strong unit and such glimpses of their camaraderie come alive quite frequently.