Simone Biles is encouraging her fans to show their support from afar after she said some supporters waited for her outside of a hotel.
“Okay I realllilly love how passionate and dedicated y’all are, BUT I have to be honest,” she wrote via her Instagram Story on Sunday, April19. “It really makes me anxious when you stand outside of the hotel all day. Can we please please please love from afar 🤍🤍🤍🤞🏾🤞🏾🤞🏾& respect privacy xx.”
Biles, 29, is in Madrid for the 2026 Laureus World Sports Awards and, while she doesn’t want fans waiting outside her hotel, she still encouraged them to say hi when they see her in public.
“i would love to take pics while I’m out & about though 🫶🏾,” she added.
Throughout her career, the legendary gymnast has been unafraid to speak out on the issues important to her. During the 2020 Summer Olympics, she memorably withdrew from competition, citing mental health concerns.
“I say put mental health first,” she told the media at the time. “Because if you don’t, then you’re not going to enjoy your sport and you’re not going to succeed as much as you want to. So it’s OK sometimes to even sit out the big competitions to focus on yourself, because it shows how strong of a competitor and person that you really are — rather than just battle through it.”
Tennis star Coco Gauff later cited Biles as someone who has helped her deal with the pressures of her own sport.
“It brought me a little bit of calm, just knowing her story, with all the things she went through mentally,” Gauff, 22, told reporters at the 2025 U.S. Open. “She’s an inspiration, surely.”
Biles is also not the first athlete to raise privacy concerns amid a growing fandom. One of the catalysts toward the WNBA guaranteeing charter flights for its players came when Brittney Griner, then of the Phoenix Mercury, was accosted in a Dallas airport in 2023.
“Our league is growing, the demand for women’s basketball is growing,” Los Angeles Sparks star and president of the WNBA Players’ Association Nneka Ogwumike said the next year when the league instituted its charter program. “That means more eyes on us, which is what we want, but that means more protection from the organization that we play for, the whole W that we play for.”
But the trouble didn’t stop there. In 2024, members of the Chicago Sky were allegedly harassed by fans at a team hotel in Washington, D.C.
“Finding out our teams hotel to pull with a camera as we get off the bus and put it in my teammates face & HARASS her is NASTY WORK,” Angel Reese, then a member of the Sky, wrote via X. “This really is outta control and needs to STOP.”
“Getting harassed at our hotel is where the line needs to be drawn,” forward Michaela Onyenwere added. “Some ‘fans’ have NO CHILLLLL.”
