Ayo, Simone Biles said everything in five words. The Olympic legend captioned a new Instagram photo with “6 year old me would be proud,” and that’s a whole lot to sit with.
The photo was shot by Raetay Photography, credited on the post as @raetay_photography. No event named. No context given. Biles let the words do the work, and they delivered.
Here’s why that line hits so hard. Biles started gymnastics around age six. She was a kid flipping around in a gym in Ohio. She had no idea what she was starting. That six-year-old had no idea she’d become arguably the greatest gymnast of all time. She had no idea she’d walk into the 2016 Rio Olympics and come home with four gold medals. She definitely wasn’t mapping out Tokyo 2020 or Paris 2024.
Tokyo 2020 was its own chapter in sports history. Biles withdrew from several events to prioritize her mental health. The internet had opinions right away. A lot of people stood with her. Some didn’t. She absorbed all of it and didn’t wobble. That kind of pressure would’ve broken most people. She just kept standing.
Then Paris 2024 happened. She came back to the Olympic stage and reminded everyone exactly who Simone Biles is. Gold medals. Multiple events. A performance that made clear she wasn’t done. She was just getting started again. One of the cleanest comeback stories in sports, full stop.
She’s earned the right to look back at her six-year-old self and feel that kind of pride more than anyone in the game.
What makes the caption special is how quiet it is. Biles doesn’t do long emotional posts. She doesn’t write paragraphs about her journey or what it all means. She trains. She competes. She wins. She keeps it moving. Personal moments are rare in her feed, so this one carries real weight.
Think about what that little girl in a leotard couldn’t have known. She had no blueprint for the road ahead. The highs were historic. The pain was public. The comeback was generational. A six-year-old who just liked to flip ended up rewriting the record books and changing how the world talks about athlete mental health.
Raetay Photography caught her in a moment that looks genuine and unhurried. No big announcement behind it. Biles took a quiet second to sit with her own story, and that was more than enough.
Five words. A lifetime of work behind them. Somewhere there’s a version of a six-year-old Simone who just liked doing backflips. The person she became is everything that kid deserved.
Proud doesn’t even cover it.
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