Simone Biles at the 2016 Kellogg’s Tour of Champions
Simone Biles, center, at the 2016 Kellogg's Tour of Champions with Kidsday reporters, from left, Sarai Alleyne, Sarah Gutierrez, Alex Benincasa and John Valencia. Credit: Newsday / Pat Mullooly
We got to meet the Olympic gold medal-winning gymnast Simone Biles. She was performing at the Kellogg’sTour of Gymnastics Champions at the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn.
Simone was wonderful and interesting. She answered our questions, and was kind and straightforward. Even though she was busy getting ready to perform for thousands of fans, she took her precious time to sincerely answer our questions. One of the questions we asked her was what was her favorite event to perform. Simone said, “My favorite event is floor [exercise] because we get to show off a little bit of our personality.”
Of course, one of the big stories from the Olympics was Simone talking about how much she liked and admired actor Zac Efron. We wanted to know what it was like to meet one of her favorite stars. Simone laughed and said, “Oh gosh! Meeting Zac Efron was really cool. He is such a good person. He is just like any of us, just like the five of us sitting here. I was really surprised because everyone makes him out to be this huge star, but we sometimes forget that they are normal people, too.”
Toward the end of the interview, we took group pictures, and Simone took selfies with each of us. At the very end, before returning to warm up for the show, she autographed our media passes. Lastly, she hugged us and left for the show.
The show then started. The show was breathtaking. First, the male Olympic champions came out and did routines on the high bars. Another exciting part was the Olympic gold medalists who came down from the ceiling on the Olympic rings symbol. They then performed their events. At another part, there was a girl twirling in a veil hanging from the ceiling and there were men next to her doing tricks on rings very high off the ground. The part that put us on the edge of our seats was how high they were and the risks they were taking to complete their routines. The show concluded with all the gymnasts doing glow-in-the-dark dances. The men and women all did flips around the floor. Then the men did a dance and the women all came into the circle and joined them. It all became one big grand finale dance.
Today was a great day — meeting Simone Biles and seeing the show! If you didn’t get a chance to see the show, they are returning to the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey (kelloggstour.com).
