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Simone Biles Ditches Her Sweatpants In Astonishing ‘Handstand Challenge’


Simone Biles doing a flawless handstand is not news. The 23-year-old is the most decorated U.S. women’s gymnast ever, with at least 30 World/Olympic medals, according to USA Gymnastics. But Simone Biles doing that flawless handstand while removing her sweatpants with her feet is a new level of excellence.

On Saturday, Biles added a layer to the viral quarantine handstand challenge by posting a Twitter video of her completing this physical marvel with the caption “handstand challenge” along with a shrugging emoji. Obviously, a parade of comments flooded in, including one from (surprise) Chrissy Teigen who joked that she normally has to have someone remove her pants for her, and Ryan Reynolds who just replied “no.”

The handstand challenge is one of many social media activities designed to keep us busy during the coronavirus quarantine, and most people—including Spider-Man actor Tom Holland and co-star Jake Gyllenhaal—needed the help of a wall to stay vertical. Instead of removing sweats, they attempted to put on a shirt (aka, amateur hour.)

As CBS Sports points out, it’s hard to pin down what the more impressive part of Biles’ athletic feat is: perfectly holding the unsupported handstand, or having the flexibility to fully get her sweatpants off.

Biles——whose handstand lasted almost a minute—isn’t the only athlete to step up to the challenge. Olympian hurdler and bobsledder Lolo Jones posted a video to Twitter showing her putting on two shirts while doing the handstand—and gulping wine beforehand. Jones also echoed the sentiments of many others in quarantine, saying “First I want to thank [Holland and Gyllenhaal] for having their shirt off because I haven’t seen a man in 25 days.”

Gymnast Katelyn Ohashi nailed the shirt challenge and also removed her pants while in the handstand position last week.

Biles regularly has been posting videos that show her incredible commitment to physical training while quarantined, but it’s not clear if they’re leading up to an appearance at the Olympics, which were postponed to 2021 due to Coronavirus.

“I haven’t decided not to do it, but I haven’t really decided to do it,” [she told the Wall Street Journal] (https://www.wsj.com/articles/simone-biles-will-push-on-to-2021probably-11585738819) earlier this month.





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Colton Underwood Says He Asked Simone Biles for Advice After His Breakup With Aly Raisman


Former Bachelor star Colton Underwood has a new book out, and he’s letting people in on his personal life even more than he did on reality TV.

In The First Time: Finding Myself and Looking for Love on Reality TV, he writes about his experiences on The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, and Bachelor in Paradise, but also his non-televised relationships, like the one he had with Olympic gymnastics star Aly Raisman a few years back.

“Aly was easy to talk to. She was open, funny, bright, honest, and inquisitive. She laughed easily and had a smile that I would’ve been happy to simply gaze at for the rest of the night, no further conversation necessary,” he wrote in his book, per Us Weekly. Of their first dates, he said, “It was very late when I dropped her back at her hotel, and when I said I’d had a great time, I meant it. Later that night, Aly texted me a thank-you. Neither of us had expected to get on as well as we did. For a first date, it couldn’t have gone better.” Sadly, their relationship didn’t last.

Colton Underwood and Aly Raisman in January 2017.

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When the couple broke up, Underwood reached out to Raisman’s friend and fellow gymnast Simone Biles for advice. “I pulled over to the side of the road, stunned and unable to comprehend this was happening,” he wrote of their FaceTime split. “Aly said she felt overwhelmed, confused, and in need of a break. Afterward, I sat in my car and cried. I was numb for days.” After not hearing back from Raisman via text, he says he got in touch with Biles “hoping she could offer an explanation or insight.” Alas, she could not. He says he is now a “better and wiser man” because of their relationship and also reveals he promised not to speak about her on The Bachelorette.

Colton Underwood is currently dating Cassie Randolph, whom he met on his Bachelor season. Here’s hoping everyone involved is in a better place now.



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At 36, I Learned to Backflip Like Biles


I spent six months working on the double twist but couldn’t get further than one-and-a-half rotations. The double seemed beyond my grasp.

Meanwhile, my six-year-old daughter, Sydney, had made the gymnastics team at Hill’s Gymnastics—a fantastic club near our home, where Olympians have trained. She had a goal of her own: a roundoff back handspring without a spot. Until she mastered that skill, she would not be allowed to compete in the floor event, but she was scared. So I offered her a deal. I told her that when she found the bravery and fierceness to do her roundoff back handspring, I would find the same fierceness in myself to land a double twist.

It sounds like a brilliant parenting tactic from your friendly motivational mom. But really, I was buying myself time. My daughter still seemed pretty far away from mastering her goal, so I figured I had plenty of time to deal with my own fear. But my daughter surprised me. My challenge sparked her competitive drive, and she landed her roundoff back handspring—without a spotter—that very week. Uh-oh.

When I went to my gymnastics class that week, I reminded myself of how brave my six-year-old daughter had been. How she had set a goal for herself that seemed big and scary, and then mustered up the bravery to accomplish it. And then I went for it.

And I absolutely killed it—sticking the landing.

I did another one, and another one, and then asked a friend to record it so I could show Sydney when I got home. She was as proud of me as I was of her.

I was so excited about my Biles-esque goal, I posted it to Twitter—and it went viral. Apparently “middle aged, out-of-shape lawyer channels her inner Simone Biles” resonates for more people than I could have imagined. My back layout with a double twist currently has almost two million views.

I’m still taking my out-of-shape, overworked appellate lawyer self to class each week—and loving every minute. Now I want to improve my fitness level not out of self-consciousness with my appearance but because it’ll help me do harder and harder gymnastics skills. Plus, I know I’ll be a better tumbler than Syd for a limited period of time—she’s bound to exceed my skill level at some point—and I have to milk that for as long as I can.

After accomplishing a move I never in a million years thought I’d be able to do, I’ve set a new goal, which seems even more impossible: a double back somersault. To do a double back, you have to jump high enough into the air and complete two backflips before landing on your feet, which requires some serious athleticism. It’s daunting but I know I can do it. And I’ll even take that attitude to my professional goal: arguing a case in the Supreme Court.

Jaime Santos is a graduate of Harvard Law School and a partner in the Supreme Court and Appellate Litigation Practice at Goodwin Procter in Washington, DC. She is also a co-host of the popular Supreme Court podcast, Strict Scrutiny.



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Simone Biles Fires Back at USA Gymnastics' Happy Birthday Tweet By Asking for An ‘Independent Investigation’


Simone Biles, one of the greatest athletes of all time, turned 23 years old this Saturday, March 14. On Instagram, Biles shared a sweet snap with fans saying she was excited and “ready for my Jordan year!”

To honor the Olympian, USA Gymnastics also sent a tweet to the star (though they tagged the wrong account) saying, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the most decorated gymnast of all time, @simonebiles! We know you will only continue to amaze us and make history!”

However, Biles wasn’t amused by the tribute from the organization that recently offered a settlement to athletes who have sued the organization over sexual abuse suffered at the hands of sports doctor Larry Nassar. In response to the tweet, Biles fired back with a birthday request. “How about you amaze me and do the right thing…have an independent investigation,” she tweeted.

This isn’t the first time Biles has requested the organization take further action. In February, following USA Gymnastics’ announcement that it will give $215 million to sexual assault survivors in an effort to settle lawsuits over its failure to protect them from Nassar, Biles tweeted that more needed to be done.

“Ugh at the airport,” she tweeted. “Heading to team camp. Still want answers from USAG and USOPC. Wish they BOTH wanted an independent investigation as much as the survivors & I do. Anxiety high. Hard not to think about everything that I DON’T WANT TO THINK ABOUT!!! “

As of Sunday, her tweet had more than 428,000 likes and fellow gymnastics Olympian Aly Raisman took to Instagram to praise her teammate. “This. Is. AWESOME. @simonebiles I love you!!!!” Raisman wrote in the caption of a screenshot of Biles’ tweet.

Biles, who shared that she was also abused by Nassar, isn’t alone in calling out the need for an independent investigation. In 2019, a bipartisan Senate committee announced at the conclusion of its own 18-month investigation that both USA Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee “knowingly concealed abuse by Larry Nassar, leading to the abuse of dozens of additional amateur athletes from summer 2015 to September 2016.” The report added, the organizations and Michigan State had a chance to stop Nassar and “failed to do so.”

Following the investigation’s rulings, and just prior to competing in the 2019 U.S. Gymnastics Championships, Biles told reporters, “They couldn’t do one damn job. You had one job. You literally had one job, and you couldn’t protect us. And it’s just really sad because every time I go to the doctor or training, I get worked on and I don’t want to get worked on, but my body hurts. I’m 22. At the end of the day, that’s my fifth rotation, and I have to go do therapy, but it’s just hard, and we try to work through it, but it’ll take some time.

She added, “I’m strong, I’ll get through it, but it’s hard.”





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Simone Biles Wants to Join the Navarro Squad From Netflix's 'Cheer'


Cheer-mania continues to sweep the nation—and the world’s greatest gymnast, Simone Biles, is ready to get in on the action.

The six-episode Netflix documentary series, featuring one of the country’s top cheerleading squads, is a an emotional ride and a testament to the athletic ability of competitive cheerleaders. Seriously, how do they do all of that flipping and flying? And, now, Biles says she’d like to join the Navarro College squad. “Netflix series CHEER had me convinced after 2020 I’m trying out for Navarro Cheer,” she tweeted. Of course, she’s got a little competition called the Olympics coming up this summer in Tokyo, but she obviously has the skill set to make it on mat.

“I showed this tweet to @monicaaldama, @Lexi_Brumback, @Jerry_K2TR, @MorganSimianer, @GabiButlerCheer, @L_Marshall17 today and they said, YOU’RE IN!” the official Netflix account tweeted in reply, tagging coach Monica Aldama and the members of the squad prominently featured in Cheer. “Welcome to the team!!! ❤️❤️❤️,” Aldama added in a separate tweet.

Biles isn’t the only celebrity obsessed with the crew from Navarro—a small junior college in Corsicana, Texas—though she might be the only one who could jump right in and make the team as a flyer. “When Coach Monica said she had a lot of career choices but all she wanted to do was coach these @NavarroCollege Cheerleaders, I started to think about all the female coaches who we never see in movies or TV that are changing kids lives. And I cried again ! ?#CheerNetflix,” Reese Witherspoon previously tweeted. “I’m a Lexi with a La’Darius moon and Gabi Butler rising. You? #CheerNetflix,” Lena Dunham penned on Twitter. And the queen of social media, Chrissy Teigen, even made an entire Cheer parody.

Even NFL superstar JJ Watt is a fan. “Kealia: I’ve heard people say CHEER on Netflix is really good, we should watch it. Me: I guess we can give it a shot. Me 2 episodes in: JERRY HARRIS IS THE HEART AND SOUL OF NAVARRO COLLEGE CHEERLEADING. IF HE DOESN’T MAKE THE MAT, I WILL RIOT,” he enthusiastically tweeted.

While there is obviously a huge appetite for the show, a second season has not been officially announced by Netflix. “We don’t really know anything about [season 2] right now,” Aldama told Us Weekly. “So we’re just excited to be here right now and have season 1 and just the love and support of season 1. So, we’ll see.”

And maybe, just maybe, we’ll also get a cameo from Simone Biles.



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New Report Says USA Gymnastics Did Not Talk to Simone Biles About the Larry Nassar Investigation for Years


It’s been almost two years since Larry Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 125 years in prison by a Eaton County, Michigan court on criminal sexual conduct charges, but we are still learning more details about how he was able to continue as the team doctor for USA Gymnastics for so long. (Nassar also received a 40- to 175-year sentence in Ingham County, Michigan, as well as a 60-year sentence in federal court on child pornography charges.)

A new report from the Wall Street Journal says that even though USA Gymnastics was conducting an investigation into Nassar—they didn’t tell Simone Biles until after the Rio Olympics in 2016. Per the WSJ, Biles was one of three gymnasts (along with Aly Raisman and Maggie Nichols) who had expressed discomfort about Nassar in 2015, but they say she was not interviewed by the body’s own investigator before the Nassar story went public in 2016.

Rhonda Faehn, the former director of the women’s program for USA Gymnastics, said in testimony before Congress that she was notified in June 2015 that Biles, Maggie Nichols and Aly Raisman had “concerns” about the doctor’s treatment methods. She claims that she passed that information to Steve Penny, then-President of USA Gymnastics, which he disputes. Though, per USA Today, he does admit to knowing Biles was someone they “might want to talk to about Nassar.” But that never happened and Biles then met with the FBI on the matter in the fall of 2016.

In January 2018, Biles publicly announced that she had been abused by Nassar. “I, too, am one of the many survivors that was sexually abused by Larry Nassar,” she said at the time. “There are many reasons that I have been reluctant to share my story, but I know now that it is not my fault.”

The most decorated gymnast of all-time declined to be interviewed for the WSJ story, but her parents gave the paper this statement: “We continue to struggle with how and why this happened, and every time we hear something new like this, it feels like the harshest of betrayals and it is just too painful for our family to talk about openly.”

Biles is not staying silent, however, tweeting about the story herself. “Can’t tell you how hard this is to read and process. The pain is real and doesn’t just go away…especially when new facts are still coming out,” she wrote. “What’s it going to take for a complete and independent investigation of both USOPC and USAG???” She followed it up with, “Numb is becoming a normal feeling.”

Biles also recently spoke out against a distasteful banner hanging at a University of Michigan fraternity house ahead of a football game with rival Michigan State University, where Nassar worked. “You can’t touch us @LarryNassar,” it read. Biles responded, “unbelievable….. this is the type of stuff that makes me sick to my stomach. I hope the school is taking the proper measurements in investigating this…”

The school announced it “will be pursuing corrective action with those responsible for hanging the banners and those who failed to intervene.”



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