# The Twisties *A Biography of Simone Biles* — Legendary Biographies No. 143 - **Subject:** Simone Arianne Biles Owens - **Written by:** Roland Mercer - **Shelf:** Sport / Gymnastics - **Published:** 2026 - **Extent:** 194 pages, 6 × 9 in, 60# uncoated cream, black ink - **EPUB:** $3.99 — EPUB 3 · DRM-free · reads on Kindle, Kobo and Apple Books (ISBN 979-8-90623-122-2) - **Audiobook:** $5.99 — Unabridged · measured from the masters · read by Alasdair Finn (ISBN 979-8-90623-600-5) Buy it, or read the opening free: volumes/143-the-twisties.html ## About this book July 27, 2021, the Ariake Gymnastics Centre, Tokyo. Simone Biles, twenty-four, the most decorated American gymnast in history, withdraws from the team final of the postponed 2020 Olympics after a vaulting attempt in which she experiences a phenomenon the gymnastics community calls 'the twisties' — a sudden loss of in-air spatial orientation that can be fatal in elite competition. She withdraws from four of her remaining five events. The decision, which she explains in real time as a matter of mental health, becomes the most-discussed moment of the Tokyo Games. She returns to competition at the 2023 U.S. Championships, wins her eighth all-around national title, and leads the U.S. team to the gold medal at Paris 2024 — her second Olympic gold and her eleventh Olympic medal overall. Roland Mercer's biography opens earlier — in Columbus, Ohio, where Simone Arianne Biles was born in 1997, the third of four children of a young mother who was deemed unfit to raise them — and follows the arc through the foster-care years, the long Spring, Texas adoption by Ronald and Nellie Biles, the Bannon's Gymnastics academy under Aimee Boorman, the 2013 World Championships at fifteen, the long 2013-2016 perfect run, the 2016 Rio four golds and one bronze, the long 2017-2020 Larry Nassar testimony years, the 2021 Tokyo twisties, the 2022 Jonathan Owens marriage, the 2024 Paris team gold and the Yurchenko-double-pike vault now called the Biles II, and the long second post-Paris year in Spring, Texas. What emerges is a portrait of the most decorated American gymnast in history, the Nassar survivor whose Senate testimony produced the Empowering Olympic, Paralympic, and Amateur Athletes Act of 2020, and the elite athlete whose decision to withdraw from competition in Tokyo for her mental health rewrote what an elite athlete was permitted to say. ## Contents 1. Columbus 2. Spring 3. Bannons Gymnastix 4. Aimee 5. Antwerp 6. Rio 2016 7. Nassar 8. Testimony 9. The Weight 10. The Twisties 11. The Withdrawal 12. The Aftermath 13. Comeback 14. Paris 15. The Yurchenko Double Pike 16. The Numbers 17. Owens 18. The Meaning 19. Paris ## Questions **Who is The Twisties about?** Simone Arianne Biles Owens. The title never carries the subject's name: it names one concrete thing out of the life — in this case The Twisties — and the name goes on the line underneath. **Is this an authorised biography?** No. No subject, estate, label or foundation had approval over the text, and none paid for a word of it. The cost of that independence is that no new interviews were conducted for the book; it is built from the public record, and it says on the page where a scene is reconstructed rather than documented. **Can I read some of it before buying?** Yes — the whole opening chapter and the writer's foreword, free and in full, with no email address and no account. That is 3,611 words of the book. **How long is it?** About 59,500 words, 19 chapters, 194 pages in the paperback. ## The writer Roland Mercer is a Boston-based culture writer whose biographies of athletes have appeared as cover features in Sports Illustrated and The Atlantic. He covers the NFL, NBA, and the institutions that profit from each. His longform writing focuses on the physical costs of modern athletic competition and the complex systems that surround professional sports. Through books like The Fastest Woman, Friendly Fire, and The Bypass Transfusion, Mercer examines the intersection of physical endurance and commercial pressure. In books such as The Twisties and The Industrial Park Murder, he explores the psychological strain on high-profile competitors and the darker aspects of competitive industries. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts, where he spends his free time rowing on the Charles River and collecting vintage sports memorabilia.