Before 6 AM: Simone Biles Mistaken for Two Other Black Athletes

It’s a morning that starts like any other, except it’s not. Before the sun comes up, before most people have finished their first cup of coffee, Simone Biles has already been called two different names by two different people. Not once. Multiple times.

On Sunday, July 12, the 29-year-old Olympic champion posted to her Instagram Story about the experience: she’d been misidentified as Dominique Dawes, the retired Olympic gymnast, twice before 6 a.m., and as Sha’Carri Richardson, the Olympic track and field sprinter, once. She added laughing emojis—the kind that suggests she’s processing something through humor, which is often what happens when you’re too tired or too accustomed to something to be angry about it right then.

This isn’t Biles’first time speaking out about how she navigates these moments. In a 2020 interview with Today, she reflected on when she first became aware of racism in her gymnastics career. She didn’t notice it for years, she said, until an incident at the 2013 World Championships in Belgium, where she made history as the first Black woman to win all-around. A fellow competitor, Carlotta Ferlito, made a comment suggesting that if gymnasts painted their skin black, maybe they’d all win. The remark made headlines—not Biles’historic achievement. When asked about it then, Biles said racism“happens every day”and that every Black athlete or athlete of color could tell a similar story. But she also made a choice: to keep going for the younger athletes watching, to show them that what you look like doesn’t determine what you can achieve.

The misidentification incident arrives amid another challenging chapter. In June, Biles shared that she’d experienced a serious health scare—something she described as nearly fatal—and spent time in the hospital. While her husband, Jonathan Owens, was away in Indiana for NFL team workouts, she was navigating what she called“one of, if not the scariest experience of my life.”When followers pressed her for details weeks later, she wasn’t ready to share. Privacy still matters to her, even now.

What strikes about these two moments back-to-back—the misidentification and the health crisis—is the weight they carry in isolation and together. One is a small daily indignity that might seem trivial on its surface. The other is a serious medical event. But both sit inside a larger reality: visibility without recognition, achievement without safety, a platform that doesn’t always translate to being truly seen.