Simone Biles Is the Most Culturally Influential Female Athlete Alive. Here’s What She’s Building With It.

The gymnastics record is settled. Seven Olympic gold medals. Thirty world championship medals. The most decorated gymnast in history. The GOAT conversation in her sport is over — she won it.

What is less talked about is what Simone Biles has been doing with that platform off the mat. And it is substantial.

The Moment That Changed Everything

Tokyo 2021 was not a failure. It was the beginning of something different.

When Biles withdrew from the team final and the individual all-around at the Tokyo Olympics, she was navigating a condition called the twisties — a disorienting mental block that affects a gymnast’s spatial awareness mid-skill and can be life-threatening at the elite level. She withdrew. The world reacted in every direction.

What she said afterward framed everything that followed. “It got me the therapy that I deserved, and I’m still currently in therapy,” she told CNN Sports at the Laureus World Sports Awards earlier this year. “Gymnasts aren’t viewed as people who have weaknesses, and that was the first time that weakness was displayed on a global stage like that. Now, I look at it as being courageous.”

She did not ask to become a mental health advocate. She said so plainly — that being placed at the front of that conversation was never her goal. But the conversation had already started, and she chose to lead it rather than step away from it.

The Paris Olympics in 2024 completed the arc. She returned, won three gold medals and a silver, and reclaimed the individual all-around title she had walked away from three years earlier. The comeback was not just athletic. It was a demonstration of what happens when an athlete takes care of themselves and comes back on their own terms.

Faces of Fitness Chicago

Last Sunday, July 26, Biles headlined the sold-out Faces of Fitness Chicago festival — a two-day event in the city’s River North neighborhood that organizers describe as the Lollapalooza of fitness. The fifth-anniversary edition sold out entirely.

Biles took the stage for what organizers called a first-ever fully immersive mental health experience. Roughly 5,000 attendees joined her on yoga mats for a three-part session moving through body, mind, and soul — a guided morning stretch, an intimate fireside-style conversation about her mental health journey, and a group meditation. The experience was built entirely around her advocacy work, not her gymnastics record.

That distinction matters. She is no longer standing in front of audiences as a gymnast who talks about mental health. She is presenting herself as a mental health advocate who happens to be the greatest gymnast ever. The order of that framing has shifted.

Taste of Gold

In March, Biles opened her first restaurant — Taste of Gold — at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas, in partnership with Athlete Playmakers Group. The concept reflects her gymnastics legacy through Olympic-themed décor and a menu built around sandwiches, Tex-Mex dishes, and signature items developed with chef Mark Brezinsky.

Houston is home. The airport is where millions of people pass through the city annually. Biles placed her first hospitality venture in a location that guarantees consistent foot traffic from the broadest possible audience. It is a deliberate choice — and it fits the pattern of how she has built her brand, always rooted in where she comes from.

Athleta and the Business of Authenticity

Biles made a pivotal business decision when she left Nike for Athleta in 2021. The move was framed as a values alignment — a company that emphasized wellness, empowerment, and mental health over performance metrics alone. At a moment when she was navigating one of the most scrutinized decisions of her career, she chose a partner that matched her priorities rather than her podium count.

That decision has defined her commercial identity since. Her brand is not built around medals and endorsement checks. It is built around authenticity — a word that gets overused in athlete marketing but that Biles has actually operationalized. She picks partners aligned with her values. She speaks publicly about therapy and mental health in a sport that has historically treated both as liabilities. She has built a commercial presence that does not require her to be unbreakable.

Forbes reported she earned an estimated $11.2 million in 2024, with nearly all of it coming from off-mat income. That is not a typical number for a gymnast. It reflects a brand that has moved well beyond the sport that created it.

What She Is Actually Building

The through line across all of it — Tokyo, Paris, Athleta, Taste of Gold, Faces of Fitness, the ongoing advocacy — is consistency. Biles has not reinvented herself multiple times or chased trends. She has done the same thing repeatedly: shown up honestly, chosen partners and projects that reflect her actual values, and let the platform she built through gymnastics carry work that matters beyond the competition floor.

She told the Laureus audience something that captures it cleanly: “Now hearing these athletes mention my name, it’s like, ‘Wow, we’re making progress, we’re making change, we’re being a voice and leader.’ So it means the world to me.”

She did not set out to change the conversation around athlete mental health. She set out to take care of herself. The change followed. That is the version of athlete influence PTV has always been interested in — not manufactured, not managed. Just real, and built to last.