INDIANAPOLIS, Dec. 5, 2016 – 2016 Olympic all-around champion Simone Biles of Spring, Texas/World Champions Centre, is one of 11 finalists for Time magazine’s 2016 Person of the Year. Time selects the most influential person of the year to honor the person or group of people who have had the largest global impact over the past 12 months. The winner will be announced on Wednesday, Dec. 7.
Biles made history at the 2016 Olympic Games by winning four gold medals and becoming the most decorated U.S. gymnast in history with her 19 World and Olympic medals. Biles’ four gold medals tie the Olympic record for a female gymnast in a single Games. A three-time World all-around champion (2013-15), Biles became the fourth female gymnast in Olympic history to capture back-to-back World and Olympic all-around titles and the first since Lilia Podkopayeva in 1996. She joins Douglas (2012), Liukin (2008), Carly Patterson (2004), and Retton (1984) as the only U.S. women to win an Olympic all-around title. Biles’ victory gave the United States a fourth consecutive gold medal in the women’s all-around, a feat no other country has accomplished at the Olympics in men’s or women’s gymnastics, and its fifth overall. She led the USA to it second consecutive, and third overall, Olympic team title. Biles also won the USA’s first-ever women’s vault gold medal, along with the floor gold medal and the balance beam bronze. She was chosen by the U.S. athletes competing in Rio to carry the U.S. flag in the Olympics’ closing ceremony. The 2016 U.S. Women’s Olympic Gymnastics Team received Team USA’s Team of the Olympic Games Award from the United States Olympic Committee.
The other finalists are: Hillary Clinton, CRISPR Scientists, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Nigel Farage, the Flint Whistleblowers, Beyoncé Knowles, Narendra Modi, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump and Mark Zuckerberg.