7-Time Gold Medalist Simone Biles Isn’t Thinking About the 2028 Olympics: ‘Can’t I Live?’

Seven-time Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles, who collected four medals this year alone, isn’t making any immediate plans for the 2028 games. During a recent appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the gymnastics legend reflected on her recent success in Paris. She recognized that whether or not she’ll compete when the games come to Los Angeles is the burning question everyone wants answered — but right now, she’s looking ahead at her future outside of the gym.

“Everybody wants to know this question. I’m like, ‘Can’t I live?’” Biles told Fallon, laughing. She has thought about it, but mostly just to the extent of how her age factors into her standing as a gymnast. “First, I’m getting older. 27 is a little bit old for a gymnast,” she said. “Outside of the gym, I’m young. Tequila, no hangover. But in the gym? I am old.” Biles joked that it would be easier if there was a way to tag team the competition by tapping someone else in halfway through on beam, vault, floor, and bar routines.

The Paris Olympics were, on their own, a major accomplishment for Biles. It marked something of a redemption tour for the athlete, who partially pulled out of the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 after experiencing “the twisties,” a disorienting condition that drastically throws off a gymnast’s rhythm, balance, and spatial awareness. “It meant everything, especially coming off of Tokyo. That wasn’t my best performance or how I planned for it to go,” she explained. “So to put the work in mentally and physically and to be back on a world stage, competing at an Olympic Games meant everything to me.”

Now that Biles has solidified herself as the greatest gymnast of all time — so much so that she wears a diamond-encrusted goat pendant on a chain around her neck — her focus is on preserving her legacy as such. “As long as I’m inspiring the next generation and having fun and just making sure that it’s not all about winning, but still putting a good foot forward even when it doesn’t go your way, I think that’s what I would want it to be,” she added.