Simone Biles

At the Tokyo Olympics in July 2021, Simone Biles stopped mid-competition. During a vault in the team final, she lost track of where she was in the air, a dangerous condition gymnasts call "the twisties," and she withdrew to protect her safety and her mental health. The decision was criticized by some and admired by many more. Three years later, at the Paris Olympics, she won three gold medals and a silver, completing one of the great comebacks in sport.

She was born at 6:02 in the morning on March 14, 1997, in Columbus, Ohio, a time from her birth certificate. Her Sun is in Pisces, with Mercury and Venus also in Pisces, all in the first house, and Pisces is her rising sign. Pisces is the sign of fluidity, sensitivity and moving between states, and gymnastics, at Biles's level, looks almost like defying physics. But Pisces is also sensitive to confusion and disorientation, and the twisties, a sudden loss of spatial awareness, are about as Piscean a problem as an athlete can have.

Saturn in Aries sits in the first house too. Saturn is discipline and hard-won achievement, and Aries is courage and physical daring. Biles is known for attempting skills no other gymnast will try, and five gymnastics elements are now named after her.

Her early life was difficult. Her mother struggled with substance use, and Biles and her siblings spent time in foster care. She was later adopted by her maternal grandfather, Ron Biles, and his wife, Nellie, whom she calls her parents, and raised in Spring, Texas. She discovered gymnastics at six, on a daycare field trip to a gym.

Her Moon is in Gemini in the third house, which governs siblings and early environment. A Gemini Moon is quick, playful and adaptable, and in the third it ties emotional security to brothers and sisters. Biles has spoken about how closely she remained bound to her siblings through the upheavals of childhood.

At the 2016 Rio Olympics she won four gold medals, in the team, all-around, vault and floor events, and a bronze on the balance beam. She became the most decorated gymnast in World Championship history, with more than thirty medals.

Mars, retrograde in Virgo, falls in her seventh house of partnership. Mars in Virgo is precise and exacting. In 2021 she testified before the Senate about the FBI's failure to investigate the abuse of gymnasts by the former national team doctor Larry Nassar, of whom she was a survivor. In 2023 she married Jonathan Owens, an NFL safety.

Jupiter and Uranus, both in Aquarius, sit in her twelfth house, the area of the chart concerned with private struggles and inner work. Biles has become one of the most prominent athletes to speak openly about therapy and mental health. The Pisces planets made her fly; the Saturn beside them made her land.