Faith, Family Fuel Simone Biles' Olympic Run, as Team USA's "Final Five" Capture Gold in Rio 

Biles and her teammates Gabby Douglas, Aly Raisman, Madison Kocian, and Laurie Hernandez [together won Team Gold with a collective score of 8.209 points on Tuesday night in Rio].
Simone Biles is the picture of beauty and grace in Olympic gymnastics competition in Rio de Janeiro. Along with her coaches, even her competition has called her "the best ever," "the perfect 10," and "the best gymnast in history." (Photo via CBN News)

But Biles' road to Rio was far from easy. She and her sister, Adria, were born in Columbus, Ohio, to drug-addicted parents. They had no relationship with their father and their mother was in and out jail, ultimately losing custody of both of them.
The two girls bounced between foster homes until Simone was 6 years old. In an interview with Texas Monthly, Biles recalled one foster home even had a trampoline, but she was not allowed to play on it.

The foster home bouncing settled when Simone's grandparents, Ron and Nellie Biles, officially adopted the two girls and relocated them to their home in Spring, Texas. (Photo courtesy of the Biles family/via TexasMonthly.com)

Ron and Nellie introduced Simone to gymnastics. After a year at a Texas gym, trainer and former competitive gymnast, Aimee Boorman noticed Simone's gift.

Since that moment, Boorman has guided Simone's meteoric rise.

Simone's grandparents also legally adopted the two girls and introduced them to the Christian faith. Faith and family have kept Biles grounded along her journey to becoming the "best athlete in the world."

Biles told US Weekly, "My mom, Nellie, got me a rosary at church. I don't use it to pray before a competition. I'll just pray normally to myself, but I have it there in case."

Since 2013, Biles has earned 10 World Championship gold medals, two Pacific Rim Championship golds, and the all-around gold at the 2015 American Cup. (Photo "the Final Five"/via Fox Sports)

At 19, she is also the first woman to win three consecutive all-around World Championship titles.

The three-time world champion led the way in the all-around competition in the Olympic gymnastics preliminaries Sunday.

Biles and her teammates Gabby Douglas, Aly Raisman, Madison Kocian, and Laurie Hernandez, [together won Team Gold with a collective score of 8.209 points on Tuesday night in Rio].

 

Steele Johnson and David Boudia Have Faith in Their Diving

On Monday night, Boudia and Johnson won silver in the men's synchronized 10-meter diving event. The Christian Examiner reports that the two divers proclaimed their faith in their post-dive interview. Both men said their Christian faith gives them perspective and allows them to enjoy their sport without allowing themselves to be defined by it.

Steele Johnson almost died on the diving platform.
In 2009, at age 12, he was practicing his favorite dive, a triple reverse somersault in a tuck position — watch for him to ace it in the men’s individual platform diving in Rio — when he cracked his skull on a concrete platform, sliced open his scalp and fell 33 feet into the pool.
His coach pulled him out and held his head together all the way to the hospital. Today, he still has some memory loss.
But Johnson, a Christian, has spoken of how his faith helped him recover and placed him in medal contention in Rio.
“I wanted to be the kid that had the big injury and came back from it and made the Olympics and all that stuff,” Johnson told the Indianapolis Star in June. “So it’s kind of embarrassing. But now I’ve kind of realized that God had his hand over all of it to help me come to the realization, like, that’s not why at all.
“He gave me this ability to dive,” Johnson said. “ … God kept me alive and he is still giving me the ability to do what I do.”
At the Rio Olympics, he will compete in the 10-meter men’s synchronized platform diving with David Boudia, a three-time Olympian and a fellow Christian.
In July, when the pair qualified for the Olympics — Johnson’s first and Boudia’s third — Johnson was so overwhelmed he doubled over with emotion before getting out of the pool.

“It’s cool because this is exciting, this is fun, but this is not what my identity will be for the rest of my life,” a dripping Johnson told NBC Sports. “Yeah, I’m Steele Johnson the Olympian, but at the same time I’m here to love and serve Christ. My identity is rooted in Christ, not in the flips we’re doing.”

Boudia, who is six years older than Johnson, also said his diving is driven by his faith.
“We can’t take credit for this,” Boudia told NBC Sports. “To God be the glory.”
Of the pair, Boudia has the most experience in talking publicly about the connection between his faith and his sport. He has written an entire book about the subject, “Greater Than Gold: From Olympic Heartbreak to Ultimate Redemption,” that hit stores a few days before the Olympics began.
In it, he tells how he went from a not particularly observant Catholic upbringing to evangelical Christian through the help of his Perdue University diving coach, Adam Soldati.

“I am not a diving coach who happens to be a Christian,” Soldati said in a talk he gave at his church just after the close of the 2012 London Olympics, where Boudia won a gold medal. “But rather I am a Christian, follower of Christ who happens to be a diving coach.”
In his book, Boudia talks about how he was engaged in “a destructive lifestyle” at Perdue and sought his coach’s guidance. He credits his gold medal to his conversion to evangelical Christianity.

“Whatever happens at the end of this Olympic Games is completely out of my control,” Boudia said in 2012. “God is totally sovereign over everything.”
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Evangelical Archer Mackenzie Brown Takes Aim at First Olympics

Mackenzie Brown may be the only woman on Team USA’s archery squad, but she is just one of the guys in another way: Like her coach and many of her fellow bowmen, Brown, 21, is an evangelical Christian.

 

“I am so beyond ecstatic to be going to Rio this summer for the Olympic Games!!” Brown said in a tweet after qualifying for the team in July. “I’m so grateful for all of the support and love from y’all! God is so good all the time!”

 

No one doubts Brown’s right to a place on the team — she is ranked fourth in the world. But it has refocused attention on Team USA’s archery coach, Kisik Lee, who has come under scrutiny in the past for blending his Christianity with his coaching.

 

He has been involved in the baptism of at least seven Olympic-bound archers, including 2016 team member and 2010 silver medalist Brady Ellison. At the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Lee reportedly ran a morning hymn-sing and Bible study and regularly worshipped with athletes at the interfaith center.

 

“I just want to show them who I am,” Lee told The New York Times in 2008. “I’m the witness of Jesus, not just an instructor. So I have to encourage them how, how we can change in Christ.”

 

In 2007, Lee was warned by United States Olympic Committee officials to separate his evangelism from his coaching. He reportedly no longer holds Bible study classes at the sport’s Chula Vista, Calif., training center, where athletes come to live and train. His personal website has numerous references to his faith and draws links between religious faith and performance.

 

Christianity has long been associated with archery. A verse in Genesis reads, “And God was with the lad; and he grew, and dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer.” Many archers compete with Genesis brand bows, many participate in Christian archery ministries such as On Target for Christ, and there is even an archery program at the Creation Museum in Kentucky.

 

So Brown should fit right in.

 

“There is nothing better than seeing your kid do something that she loves,” her mother, Stacey Brown, told the Tyler (Texas) Morning Telegraph. “This is a God-given ability she has.”

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Olympic Gymnast Simone Biles Brings Prayer to Rio

On the seventh day, Simone Biles rests.

 

That’s the day the world gymnastics champion, who has a clear shot at the medal podium in Rio, goes to church with her family.

 

Biles, a first-time Olympian, is a Catholic. She has said she routinely lights a candle to St. Sebastian, the patron saint of athletes and of Rio, before each meet.

 

Faith has been a constant in what has otherwise been a challenging young life. Biles, 19, and her three siblings were born in Ohio, but their mother was addicted to drugs and they were adopted by their grandparents in Texas after they were placed in foster care.

 

Today, she calls her grandparents “mom and dad” and attends church with them when she’s not at a meet. She is a four-time national champion and a three-time world champion.

 

Biles’ path to Rio has had hiccups. In 2013, she faltered badly at the U.S. Classic gymnastics meet, falling, stumbling, twisting her ankle and eventually withdrawing.

 

“I felt like my life was going down the drain,” she told Texas Monthly magazine earlier this year.

 

And while Biles is less public about her faith than some other current and past gymnastics team members — Shawn Johnson, who competed in Beijing and London, and Gabby Douglas, who returns to Rio for her second Olympics — her faith was likely a touchstone in her turnaround.

 

When Us magazine recently asked Biles to upturn and dump her gym bag for a photo, there, between the lip balm and the bottled water and the bobby pins was a white rosary.

 

“My mom, Nellie, got me a rosary at church,” she told the magazine. “I don’t use it to pray before a competition. I’ll just pray normally to myself, but I have it there in case.”

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Catholic Faith Anchors Olympic Swimmer Katie Ledecky

Katie Ledecky has no obvious physiological advantages as a swimmer.
At 6 feet, the second-time Olympian is not extraordinarily tall compared with her peers. She has no long torso, no wide wingspan like Michael Phelps.
What she has, as The Washington Post recently pointed out, is “a strong core.”
And that’s not just her muscular middle, but also the foundation of her tight family and strong Catholic faith.
“My Catholic faith is very important to me. It always has been and it always will be. It is part of who I am and I feel comfortable practicing my faith,” she told the Catholic Standard.
Ledecky surprised the world when — at age 15 and as the youngest member of the U.S. Olympic team — she won the gold medal in the 800-meter freestyle at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, setting a new U.S. record.
Now 19 and a multiple world record-holder, she has obliterated her own world record to win gold in the 400-meter freestyle and won silver as part of the 4×100-meter freestyle relay at the 2016 Rio Games. She’s still scheduled to compete in the 200- and 800-meter freestyles.
And she’ll say a prayer before each event, according to the Catholic Standard.
“I do say a prayer — or two — before any race. The Hail Mary is a beautiful prayer and I find that it calms me,” she said.
Ledecky attended Catholic schools through high school, first at Little Flower School, then Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, both in Bethesda, Md. Her godfather Fr. Jim Shea, S.J., and several Stone Ridge teachers cheered her on at the Olympic Trials this year, and many more former classmates and teachers sent supportive messages, according to the Catholic Standard.
She had returned their support after the London Games, joining her high school swim team and visiting the Immaculate Heart of Mary sisters in Bethesda, bringing them brownies and letting them wear her medal, according to Crux.
“I feel that I have very special people in my life and, because of that, I feel very fortunate,” she said.
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Olympic Track and Field athlete Allyson Felix says that her faith in Christ is what governs all aspects of her life.

Olympic Track and Field athlete Allyson Felix says that her faith in Christ is what governs all aspects of her life.
The Christian Examiner reports that the 30-year-old Felix will compete in a number of races in the second week of the Rio Olympic Games.
Although Felix is a celebrated runner and has won six world championships, she suffered a number of setbacks this past year, including the loss of her grandfather and a hamstring injury that prevented her from making the women’s 200 meters team.
Felix said that she is able to keep going despite these setbacks because of her faith.
"Faith leads my life," she told the LA Times. "I definitely feel like I've been blessed with this gift, and so that's something that helps me to see the bigger picture. It's so easy to get caught up in winning everything and just the kind of the grind of what professional sports is, but it definitely helps me to kind of pull back and see that there's a greater purpose."
Felix said she grew up in a Christian home and gave her life to Christ at a young age.
"Our family was very involved in our church. I am so blessed to have my family and the upbringing that I did. It means so much to me to have two very godly parents who both have so much wisdom. They are amazing role models that I have had the privilege to watch as I grew up," Felix shared.
She also shared that when she feels anxious about competing, she relies on Philippians 4:6-7 which reads:
"Do not be anxious about anything but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."
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