Simone Biles continues to defy odds and gravity at the U.S. Olympic gymnastics trials in Minneapolis

Watching Simone Biles, you expect the profound, but there’s just as much to enjoy when she’s profane.

An audible wave of gasps and laughter rippled through Target Center on Friday night when Biles mouthed an expletive to herself — caught clear as day on the jumbotron — after a disappointing beam routine during the first day of women’s competition at the United States Olympic gymnastics trials.

Thirty minutes later she sprinted toward the vault and executed the Biles II, an electrifying round-off entry into a double backflip. It led to a standing ovation and a monster score of 15.975. Biles, soaking in the scene, walked back down the runway and performed her second vault as more than 16,000 people went insane.

It was a wonderful distillation of what makes Biles, 27, a one-of-a-kind draw who has turned Minneapolis into the epicenter of the sports world this weekend. She is a revolutionary athlete, arguably the greatest gymnast of all time. But it’s her relatability that makes her heroic to fans.

Carolyn Kuz was strolling through Target Field Plaza an hour before the trials got underway. She wore a shirt which read “Simone Freaking Biles.” Strangers walked over to give her high fives.

Kuz had never seen Biles in official competition. She saved her money to travel from Philadelphia and secured tickets to all four nights of the trials. She has been following Biles’ career for more than a decade. They are a year apart in age.

“Totally different life experiences, but it’s nice having somebody to look at and it’s like, ‘Wow, she’s just like me in a way,’” Kuz said. “It’s a dream of mine to be here.”

Even for the highest level of athletes this country has known, Biles exists in a unique space.

She has already rewritten what is possible in her sport and is still writing. In that way she moves inside and outside any traditional notion of competition. Biles is here working toward a virtually guaranteed spot on the national team at the Paris Games while also exploring the limits of physics. It would be her third Olympics, a rarity in women’s gymnastics.

At Target Center, her physicality and creativity were wide open. She was powerful and lithe, gliding on tiptoes across the mat during her floor routine before exploding skyward in a burst of rippling muscle. On bars, her body found moments of static transition, arms and legs still and weightless, before dismounting in a gravity-defying loop of twisting somersaults.

Despite that beam routine leaving her aggravated, Biles enters Sunday’s final night of trials in the all-around lead by 2½ points.

At the elite level of gymnastics that Olympians occupy, the push for innovation and difficulty is paramount to success. Biles has simply redefined that space. She has five elements named after her in the Women’s Artistic Gymnastics Code of Points because they did not exist until she successfully performed them.

Alexis Russell Kochanski, a former two-time first team All-Big Ten gymnast at the University of Minnesota, knows the sport intimately, which is why she finds Biles so thrilling. She came to Target Center on Friday night to see her live in action.

“She brings a level of athleticism that we have never seen to gymnastics, and I don’t know that we ever will again,” Russell Kochanski said. “Her ability to do extremely complex gymnastics with so much ease, with the execution and honestly the fearlessness. I think she is impeccable.”

Alicia Sacramone Quinn, the strategic lead for the U.S. national team, said at a news conference this week it can be hard to define Biles.

“Icon?” Sacramone Quinn haltingly suggested. “I don’t even know if that’s the right way to say it.”

Chellsie Memmel, the technical lead for the team, chimed in, “We have to invent a new adjective.”

In the two marquee international events, the World Championships and Olympic Games, Biles is the most decorated gymnast of all time with 37 total medals. She is looking to add to her seven Olympic medals, already 10th most in history and tied with Shannon Miller for the most in U.S. history.

Still, her influence extends far beyond her sport. She has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She testified with Maggie Nichols, Aly Raisman and McKayla Maroney to a Senate Judiciary Committee about her experience as a survivor of sexual assault at the hands of physician Larry Nassar — taking to task the entire structure of gymnastics oversight in the United States.

At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, she stepped away from competition after experiencing “the twisties,” a physiological hitch that left her unable to perform twisting elements in routines.

Those Games were meant to be a defining moment in her career. In explaining her decision, Biles said simply, “I say put mental health first.”

Many wondered, with good reason, if that was the last time she would take part in Olympic competition. She took two years away from the sport. Then stories emerged that she had resumed training.

In June of 2023, Biles announced she was returning. In September she went to the World Championships in Antwerp and won gold in the all-around, gold on the beam, gold on the floor and silver on vault.

“She’s better than she’s ever been,” said Kuz, the Biles fan from Philly. “Which is unfathomable considering how good she always was.”

Biles is again recalibrating what’s viewed as possible in gymnastics. At 27, she is impossibly young to have accomplished so much and, for an elite American gymnast, undeniably old.

Consider: Shannon Miller, one of the best gymnasts ever, retired at 23 and won her last Olympic or Worlds medal at 19. Shawn Johnson’s last came at 16, the same age Mary Lou Retton was when she made Olympic history. Gabby Douglas, who has been attempting a comeback at age 28, won her last major medal when she was 20.

Russell Kochanski said part of the thrill of watching Biles this weekend is seeing her lead the country, again, while her influence spreads to her teammates at the trials. Biles is the oldest gymnast here by three years; two of her competitors are 15.

That makes picking an Olympic team tough “because these young babies, you want to get in there, but you have girls that have been to the Olympics and won [world] championships multiple times with experience and the ability to handle that pressure,” she said.

“I think what you’ll see this weekend, Simone at her best is still going to be light years ahead of everyone else.”

Sunday night Biles will get another chance to showcase that in Minneapolis. Then she will head to Paris and continue the work of rewriting the history of her sport.