Shawn Johnson on Simone Biles, Life After the Olympics and a New Gymnastics

It wasn’t till just lately that Olympic gold medalist Shawn Johnson felt prepared to maneuver on from gymnastics, and whereas she’s excited to see the crew compete, one of many sports activities she’s most excited to see is breakdancing.

The 2024 Summer season Olympics would be the first time athletes will compete in breakdancing. Whereas that looks like a stunning reply, there is a connection between breakdancing and gymnastics. Sunny Choi, an athlete on the American breakdancing crew, had desires of being an Olympic gymnast and was on the College of Pennsylvania gymnastics crew till she tore her ACL.

“It would not shock me,” Johnson mentioned when requested concerning the connection to gymnastics, noting the similarity between the 2.

Johnson can be excited to see one among her greatest pals, Walker Zimmerman, play on the USA soccer crew, though she acknowledged it is more likely to be a “exhausting journey” for the American crew to win gold. “However I do know It isn’t not possible,” she mentioned.

At simply 16, Johnson went to her first Olympics and gained six medals, together with the gold for her ground routine. She hoped to return to the Olympics 4 years later, however a knee harm she suffered whereas snowboarding proved to be too problematic.

For years, when the Olympics got here round, Johnson would watch and need she was again competing. However one thing modified this 12 months, and he or she mentioned she has “no curiosity” in being again within the Video games.

“I do not actually really feel that pull to be there anymore,” she mentioned.

Transitioning from being a star athlete to be a public individual by way of her social media presence has been a “huge evolution” for Johnson. She has 4.3 million followers on Instagram, the place she shares movies of her household and tries out {couples} challenges together with her husband. When she was competing as an athlete, her complete model was about being “good.” She needed to present opponents that she was “unbreakable” and “unbeatable.”

“All the things was so polished. It was so good,” Johnson mentioned. “Now, I’d say my model is as removed from that as humanly potential. My husband and I, we goal to only be relatable, to point out people who perfection, although attainable at a aggressive degree, will not be lifelike inside a life-style of a household.”

The aggressive athlete that Johnson wanted to be for partnerships when she was youthful is not the identical picture she portrays in the present day. When she chooses manufacturers to advertise, she mentioned, all the pieces has to align with the household’s values and morals, which is a part of the rationale she’s partnering with Dairy Queen. July 25 marks Miracle Deal with Day and each Blizzard bought at taking part places will lead to $1 being donated to youngsters’s hospitals by way of Kids’s Miracle Community Hospitals.

“I’ve labored with Kids’s Miracle Community for a few years,” Johnson mentioned. “That is simply such a simple, enjoyable, wonderful fundraiser for Kids’s Miracle Community Hospitals.”

Through the years, Dairy Queen has helped elevate greater than $180 million for native youngsters’s hospitals, and Johnson is hoping to take that determine to $200 million this 12 months.

Whereas Johnson has targeted on elevating cash for Kids’s Miracle Community Hospitals and her life after the Olympics, that does not imply she is not going to tune in to gymnastics. At this level, she feels extra like a mom to the crew, questioning in the event that they’re doing OK and joking if they should go to Dairy Queen for a pick-me-up, she mentioned.

This 12 months’s Olympics crew is crammed with some powerhouse veterans but in addition options 16-year-old Hezly Rivera, who’s making her Olympics debut.

“I feel there’s one thing so cool about the best way the brand new crew has laid themselves out,” Johnson mentioned. “You’ve this assertion to the world taking place with USA gymnastics that it is brand-new and higher than ever…. To see 4, clever, skilled, repeating ladies mentoring a 16-year-old going to the Olympics, I feel it is simply probably the most stunning factor ever, as a former gymnast. I feel Hezly is so extremely protected by these ladies.

It has been over a decade since Johnson competed within the Olympics, and the longevity of athletes wasn’t all the time a precedence. However seeing Simone Biles and the opposite athletes have “robust, highly effective voices” that they use to advertise the well being of opponents is an evolution that Johnson has celebrated.

Biles is making her return to the Olympics this 12 months after pulling out of a number of occasions in Tokyo due to the twisties, which made doing a few of her excessive bar strikes extraordinarily harmful. Johnson’s each shocked—and never shocked—that Biles determined to compete within the Olympics once more.

“Not shocked as a result of she’s Simone Biles however shocked as a result of she has nothing to show. She is the best of all time,” Johnson mentioned. “It is like [Michael] Jordan the place he does not should as a result of he simply is, however he’s coming again it doesn’t matter what.”