Forever Simone

The greatest gymnast of all time opens up about life as a newlywed, her recovery from Tokyo, and what's ahead including Paris, peut-être

- By Leah Faye Cooper. Photographs by Adrienne Raquel

“MAYBE HE HAS a crush on you,” Simone Biles says to me— playfully but also seriously.

It’s a Thursday evening in The Woodlands, a tony Houston suburb, and the greatest gymnast of all time and I are having dinner at Sixty Vines, known for its seasonal cuisine and 60 wines on tap. Biles picked the restaurant; it’s one of her favorites and she comes often. But as a succession of dishes arrives, compliments of the kitchen—seared bass, sliced tri-tip, and later, sticky toffee cake and Basque cheesecake delivered by chef Mikail Sayeed himself—she notes this “has never happened before.” According to Biles, he must be trying to impress me, an unrecognizable writer, and not her, a two-time Olympian and holder of 37 Olympic and World Championship medals, the most in history. “I have a feeling it’s not about me,” I say, clocking at least three people stealing stares at—definitely—her, “but we’ll go with that.”