INDIANAPOLIS, March 9, 2015 – Two-time World all-around champion Simone Biles of Spring, Texas/World Champions Centre, has been named an AAU Sullivan Award semi-finalist, the Sullivan Committee announced.
Online voting for the 85th AAU James E. Sullivan Award is open until March 15. Fans can vote once per day. Click here to vote.
Biles won both the U.S. and World all-around titles in 2013 and 2014. She won the balance beam and floor exercise titles and the silver medal on vault at the 2014 World Championships in Nanning, China, in October 2014. Biles also led the U.S. women’s team to its fourth World team title.
Biles is the first woman to win four gold medals at a single World Championships (2014) since the Soviet Union’s Ludmilla Tourischeva in 1974. She became the first U.S. woman since Shannon Miller to win back-to-back World all-around titles (1993-94) and the first woman since Svetlana Khorkina (2001, 2003). She has nine World medals (six gold, two silver, one bronze) in just two years, and is tied for the second most World medals for a U.S. gymnast with Nastia Liukin and Miller (Alicia Sacramone has 10). In addition, her six World gold medals is the most ever by an American woman.
Three gymnasts have previously won the Sullivan Award: Shawn Johnson (2008), Paul Hamm (2004) and Kurt Thomas (1979).