You’re only 20 years old but you’ve already come a long way in life. There’s quite a distance from your current achievements to your start in life.

Simone Biles: I’m an Olympic gold medalist. I’ve won four individual gold medals and a bronze medal. So I have five total, combining a total of nineteen world and Olympic medals. I’ve been holding a couple of records now. At the age of five, starting in my childhood, I was adopted by my grandparents, who are now my parents. I was in foster care from three to five years old, in and out of it. So I’ve had a couple of struggles then.

Your grandparents adopted you and became your parents. How old were you when that happened?

Simone Biles: The first time, I was three years old, and then we went to live with them, and then we went back to foster care. And then at five years old, that’s when the official adoption and everything went through, and then I went to live with them in Texas.

Do you remember the time before that?

Simone Biles: I mean I remember a little bit being in foster care. Not anything that traumatized me, because we were very lucky and thankful for our situation that we had, even though we were in foster care. We had a very nice and loving foster family and we got to stay in one place, really. So we were very blessed.

When you were first taken to the gym at age six, just watching and imitating the older girls, there were people who saw something special in you.

Simone Biles: Yeah. They saw it. I was six. I was all over the place. That I know.

What do you mean? What were you like at six?

Simone Biles: I thought I was a normal six-year-old. But everyone just saw the strength, and they saw the muscle, and they saw the definition on my body, and that’s what intrigued them.

Were you already into tumbling and being active?

Simone Biles: I was active around the house and on the playground, but nothing too serious, where my parents were like, “Let’s enroll her in a gym.” They just thought I was like every other child, flipping on the bed, flipping on the couch, doing all that stuff. Just a very brave child.

You’re quite public that when you were a kid you were diagnosed with ADHD. Has that also been an asset to you as a gymnast?

Simone Biles: I think so, energy-wise, just because it’s a way to kill my energy, and I’ve learned to focus in a little bit more on what I’m doing. So it’s helped. It’s also helped me speak out to kids on it, that it’s not something you should be afraid of telling people or think you’re different.

How do you think about it — as a disability or just as a sort of different way of being in the world?

Simone Biles: I feel like, if anyone has asthma, they don’t think of it too much as a disability. It’s just something you were born with and that you have to accept. You don’t think of yourself as an outcast because there are other kids and teens and adults struggling with the same thing. And if they can do it, you see that you can do it as well.

Does it give you an edge?

Simone Biles: If you feed into anything that makes you energized — if you’re an athlete, and whatever fuels you, to bring you more energy, then that’s what you used, and other people just already have it, I feel like.

So do you already have it?

Simone Biles: I guess a little bit. But then there are downfalls because I don’t have the focus that they have, so I could see that as a downfall, which I don’t. I just have to focus a little bit more.

What are the tools that you use to focus?

Simone Biles: I started taking medicine. I was diagnosed at a very young age. Went to the doctor, they prescribed me something. So I tried doing that and now that’s what I do to make it easier to focus.

Are there other things? All athletes have to find techniques to help focus them. So what else helps you when you’re going from your bubbly “having fun” self to having to kill it on the floor?

Simone Biles: I feel like I just know when I need to kill it. I’ve been trained, and we’re very disciplined as athletes at the high level that we do it. There are a lot of risks we take. So I just kind of know that I have an off switch and when to hit it and when to turn it back on.

Who are the people in your life who’ve inspired you to push along the way?

Simone Biles: I feel like in my immediate circle it’s definitely friends, family, coaches, doctors —anyone, really, who has belief in you, and that you can turn to and talk to. At the end of the day, they’ll always be on your side and willing to help in any way possible. And then, like, outside outside? I was homeschooled; I don’t have a lot of friends. You don’t know a lot of people, but then it would be other family members that are always checking up on you.

How about sports heroes or other heroes of yours?

Simone Biles: I feel like other sports athletes really inspire me —Alex Morgan, Serena Williams — just because they’re so dominant in their sport. Even watching track and field as well. They’re so dominant that you want to become them one day or hope to be a role model for kids like they are.

Have you had a chance to meet those heroes?

Simone Biles: I’ve gotten a chance to meet both of them. And it was pretty exciting. Alex Morgan and Serena Williams, yes.

What kind of conversations do you have with them? You’ve met Nadia Comaneci, right?

Simone Biles: Yes. Usually, it’s about gymnastics or they wish you luck on future success and then they congratulate you. It’s usually not too much because it’s just in and out. Everyone’s so busy and everyone has their own lives and you’re all just going all over the place.

You’ve been training as a gymnast continuously from age six to nineteen. What’s it like to be taking this year off? What things are you getting to do for a change?

Simone Biles: Most of the time in gymnastics, if you ask, “Can I go do this or do that?” obviously the answer is already “no” because the fear of you getting hurt. So I feel like “the year of yeses” is kind of weird, because you’re like, “I can do that? Nobody’s worried about me getting hurt?” So I’ve gotten to go on family vacations, which I couldn’t do a lot of leading up to the Olympics and those last couple of years. And I got to go indoor skydiving, and I did a lot of speaking engagements. And even when you’re younger, like, “Oh, I want to be on TV; I want to be in commercials,” and now I do all that stuff. So you kind of get to taste a little bit of everything, and now you’re just ready to go back into your shell.

You’ve always kept track of your goals. With this incredible run of gold medals behind you, what did you put in your short- and long-term goals for your year off?

Simone Biles: It was just to live life and to have fun with whatever opportunities arose, rather than set down things because I knew that at the end of the year I wanted to start training again. So I guess that could have been the biggest goal on the paper, but I didn’t write anything down because I’ve been doing it for so long and usually they were about gymnastics. And since I wasn’t doing gymnastics, I just wanted to have fun.

You knew from the time you were tiny that gymnastics was your love and your passion. Have you thought what comes after gymnastics? What are your other loves in the world?

Simone Biles: I kind of tried to do that during the year off. But then you try not to think, “What comes after gymnastics?” because I know ahead of time I’m going to be joining again for three years. So you can’t think too far, and you have to kind of live in the moment. I feel like maybe if this interview was after a second Olympics, I could tell you. Right now, since it’s going back into the grind and going back into gymnastics, you don’t really know yet, because the opportunities will hopefully be endless. And the deciding factors? We’ll see.

Your book is called Courage to Soar, and the subtitle is A Life In Balance. What does that mean, the “life in balance” part? What is a life in balance for you?

Simone Biles: It’s keeping everything on the table, and me still living my life. It’s very balanced and it’s very organized, because my body can do a lot of crazy things, and it’s kind of like sporadic, but it’s very controlled as well. So whenever I go to the gym, I do what I have to do, and then whenever I’m at home, I try to be as normal a kid as possible. I think that’s where the balance comes in.

You’re training with a new coach now for the first time. What’s that like? Now that you’re a young adult, you’ll be forging that relationship in a different way than you did as a child.

Simone Biles: With my new coach that I have, I’ve worked alongside him, because his athlete was also on the 2016 team and we’ve been training for four or five years together. So he was always at the camps I went to every single month. So it’s not like he’s a stranger to me. I know him.

How will it be different? What will be different this time, do you think?

Simone Biles: I feel like there will be differences; I just don’t know what they’ll be yet. I think it’s just different from having a coach your whole entire life and then switching because I think the relationship is different. Because it’s not like they’ve grown up with you. Now I’m an adult so it will be different. But I can’t tell you exactly what that is because I haven’t worked with him yet.

Is your body in a different place as an adult? Usually, Olympic gymnasts have sort of peaked at your age — because they’re competing at 16 years old, their body changes, and that makes it hard to keep competing.

Simone Biles: I feel like since I already went through that whole entire process at 16 years old — whenever my body was changing and all of that stuff happened — I wasn’t peaking yet, and then after all that happened, then I peaked and I feel like, in this day in our sport, we’re realizing that we’ve been peaking at an older age, so it’s been working.

About a decade ago, the International Gymnastics Federation threw out the old ten-point system. They saw that it was holding back the sport, in that it didn’t really pay to be more daring. And there was a lot of hubbub about it at the time. But you’ve personally proved the benefit of getting rid of the ten-point system. Can you talk about that, about how gymnastics has changed and how being free of the ten-point system has changed what you do?

Simone Biles: I wasn’t even born when the ten-point system was happening, so I can’t say too much about it. I was born in 1997 and I think they changed it a little bit after. So I wasn’t even a gymnast yet. So all I grew up with was not the ten-point system. But they kind of included it still in. We can get a ten on execution, which has not ever happened yet. But you have the option, at least for a 10.0 in execution, but otherwise, I feel like they felt that you could further yourself more as a gymnast in your capabilities. And you could choose your own start values, in that you could put your own flair and your own personality into your gymnastics, rather than just setting it as a ten and you can’t really do too much more to go over a ten.

So, say my sister was doing gymnastics and she can’t do the same skills I can do on whatever event that is. Maybe on bars she can have a higher start value because she can do more on bars. And say I’m like, not good at bars; I do what I’m capable of and then I see my start value. Say it’s a 15; say she starts out a 16. Then there are those differences, and then on vaults, say if I’m better than her, I can start at a higher start value. So you really do gymnastics to your own capability rather than everybody doing it to the same level and getting scored the same. So that’s when you can push your body and your mind and the limits.

You’ve said you were a very brave child. Would you say that’s one of your defining characteristics, bravery or fearlessness?

Simone Biles: I think so because to do this sport, it does come with fear, but then you also have to be fearless. You have to be brave and trust in yourself. So I think once you start to trust in yourself you become stronger as an athlete.

What are you afraid of? Everyone has fears.

Simone Biles: I’m afraid of letting people down, failure, being injured, or having an injury so bad and the doctor telling me I won’t continue with my sport. But I think that’s true of every athlete if you ask them.

How do you carry both of those inside of you — the fearlessness you need to do it and the fear that’s very real?

Simone Biles: You don’t think of the fear because if you think of the fear you start changing things and that’s when you can get injured, or all those things that you don’t want to happen that you’re thinking of could happen.

You hit a rough patch when you went from being a junior athlete to a senior athlete. There was one point when you didn’t make the national team. When was that?

Simone Biles: I was a junior when I didn’t make team. I made team when I was a senior. Or I made team when I was a junior, but then by the time it came out, around the competitive season, I had moved up to a senior and that’s when I started competing.

Is that when that rocky period happened?

Simone Biles: No, it happened when I was a junior.

After that, you won spectacularly and you’ve basically won every competition since then.

Simone Biles: Yes. While I was doing well before I met with a sports psychologist, then I kind of fell apart, and that’s when we were introduced to him.

Obviously what happens between you and a psychologist is private, but is there some part of that process you can talk about?

You went from being a great athlete who had her great days and her off days to being one who’s completely unbeatable. What clicked?

Simone Biles: I think that part is very private and it’s something that I don’t really share too much. But I also think it was just that going to him, and then the main question he asked was, “You’re usually having fun when you compete, right? Were you having fun that day?” And I was like, “No, I was too focused on what everybody else was thinking and saying and I wanted to please everyone.” He’s like, “Did you do that before?” And I said, “No”. He said, “Then why did you do that then?” I think that’s kind of what clicked. Then I realized what I do for myself is I have fun. I go out there and I don’t let anybody else change how I do things. I think that’s what really clicked.

Were you prepared to have your personal life subjected to the kind of scrutiny that star athletes and people in the public eye receive?

Simone Biles: I feel like, going into the Olympic games, you only have one goal in mind, and you’re not really tied into the media or what they’re doing because you’re so focused on yourself. I feel like, if you’re at the Olympic Games focusing on what the media’s going to say about you, you’re not really doing your job, or you’re probably not as stressed as you should be. So we go in knowing that we have one goal in mind and then we’re kind of set on that. So we’re not even focused on social media or what’s happening, or you don’t even see it because you’re not on it and you’re not really watching TV or all of that.

You and Katie Ledecky, the super swimmer, were chosen as sponsors of a Navy aircraft carrier. Can you tell us what that means?

Simone Biles: We saw the first cut of steel; we got to put our names in it that will go in some place in the ship. But it’s, basically, you have this aircraft carrier. You get to do the christening of the ship, so we’ll break the bottle. Not very soon — it’s in a couple of years. We still have awhile.

How did it feel, representing the United States at the Olympics?

Simone Biles: I think, going to the Olympics, it brings a whole other level of patriotism. So I think we have a lot of pride in representing our country. And even the soldiers that go out and represent everyone call us their heroes and all of that, but I think they’re the real heroes. So I think we have a different kind of respect when we go and compete for our country, just because we’re selected from a wide variety of a group of athletes, and then they narrow it down. So I was one of five that were selected on the team out of hundreds and hundreds of gymnasts in the United States.

Simone, thank you so very much for joining us.

Simone Biles: Thank you.