LA28 in Question, Simone Biles Opens Up on First Olympic Experience: "I Was So Naive"

Simone Biles has been to the Olympic stage three times in her career. But she hardly would have had 'deja vu' each time, as every experience was so distinct. Results-wise, her 11 Olympic medals are divided into 5 from Rio, 2 from Tokyo, and 4 from Paris. And that's because there are a lot of factors that differed each time she went to the Olympics. In Rio, she was merely a 19-year-old teenager, but in Tokyo, she was the favorite who was burdened with the need to hold the reigns.

Come Paris, she was much calmer and felt, "After all these years putting the mental work in, it's paid off." Although Biles may have opined on each experience separately, speaking to George Baleki from NESN, she recently looked back at the collective picture and addressed how each game challenged her differently.

"Oh my goodness!" Simone Biles candidly reacted to this question, which required her to go as far back as 8 years on the memory lane. Chronologically, she started with Rio, about which all she had to say was, "I was so naive about what was going and what was happening." A teenager back then, she confesses to being 'mentally programmed' or hardwired, as one can say, to what would happen if they won gold. Thus, all they did was go out there and do their job, adapting an approach that can be called "a little bit robotic."