Is Simone Biles Competing In 2028? Gymnastics Star Reveals LA28 'Time Crunch'

Simone Biles has said she is '50-50' on competing at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics, telling CNN Sports in an interview aired on Thursday, 29 April, that the LA28 home Games are on her mind but that a looming 'time crunch' and her mental health will ultimately decide whether she returns.

Biles is already the most decorated gymnast in Olympic history, with 11 medals, and has lived more than one sporting lifetime in the space of a decade. She withdrew from multiple events at the delayed Tokyo 2020 Games in 2021 after experiencing the 'twisties,' a terrifying loss of spatial awareness in mid‑air, and later spoke openly about the pressure she felt and the mental health crisis that followed. She returned to Olympic competition in Paris in 2024, where she last competed, but the idea of stretching her career through another four‑year cycle is a different calculation altogether.

LA28 Decision Puts Simone Biles On The Clock

Asked directly by CNN whether she intends to compete at LA28, the 29‑year‑old did not pretend to have a carefully crafted roadmap. 'I feel like we're still at a 50‑50,' she said, adding that with the sporting calendar already edging towards the midpoint of 2026, the window for a serious LA28 push is narrowing.

'I'm on a time crunch here now,' Biles admitted. The problem is not whether she can be made physically ready. In her telling, that part is almost the straightforward bit. 'Mental health plays a big role in it because, physically, my coaches will get me in shape,' she said.

Then she underlined it, as if to head off the usual scepticism about whether talk of mental health is just code for wavering commitment. 'I can get myself in shape,' she insisted. 'We believe in that ability. We're really thankful that I'm still healthy. Mental is a huge thing and it's a lot of dedication on that because the road's not easy. It's long, but it's still work.'

There is a quiet irony here. Biles' difficulty is not that she cannot do the skills. It is that she knows, more than most, exactly what it costs to keep doing them at this level for another four years.

The Shadow Of Tokyo

The news came after years in which Biles' career has been defined as much by what she refused to do as by the medals she collected. At Tokyo, the gymnast who once appeared superhuman stood on the global stage and pulled back. The 'twisties' made it unsafe to compete; the layers of pressure built up over years made it impossible to pretend nothing was wrong.

During the CNN Sports interview, she called that Olympic withdrawal a 'pivotal moment' and a 'mental health crisis' that played out in front of millions. 'I feel like it showed the realness to me because everyone thought I was a robot, she's not real,' Biles said. 'But it's like, down to the core, I'm just like you guys. I'm real.'

After Tokyo, she did not simply disappear. Biles said she sought 'the therapy that I deserved' and added that she is 'still currently in therapy.' The work, as she tells it, has been as much about re‑learning how to be a person as it has been about rediscovering how to be a gymnast.

'I had a lot of help and my core group was really helpful in letting me know that it's OK people go through this and you're just human,' she said. In elite gymnastics, where athletes are trained from childhood to present an unbreakable façade, she knows exactly how unusual that admission sounded. '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.'

With distance, she has reframed that moment. 'Now, I look at it as being courageous and not so much a weakness,' she said. That reinterpretation matters, because it is the lens through which any LA28 decision will pass. A home Olympics in Los Angeles, scheduled for 14 to 30 July 2028, carries its own special gravity. It offers the possibility of a storybook closing chapter and the risk of repeating an ordeal she has already survived once.

Biles is clear that nothing is confirmed. The '50‑50' line is not a tease, it is a hedge against pretending certainty where there is none. Until she decides whether she can shoulder another four‑year build‑up, the prospect of Simone Biles competing in LA28 remains a live question, and one she sounds determined to answer on her own terms rather than anyone else's timetable.