Rio 2016 Olympics: American gymnast Simone Biles is new Nike endorser

An Olympics gold is no guarantee of endorsements for top sports brands, one has to shine consistently in several Olympics such as Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest man, who has a US$10 million (A$13.07 million) a year endorsement contract with Puma through 2017 which goes down to US$4 million (A$5.23 million) through 2025. But with Nike’s “new unlimited” campaign, new medalists such as American gymnast Simone Biles is now a Nike endorser.

She joins the ranks of the USA basketball team and fellow gymnast Gabby Douglas, reports Mashable. Simone, the best all-around female gymnast, stars in a one-minute, 43-second commercial which focuses on the training she went through that led to her becoming a champion.

Biles’s adoptive mother is the voice-over talent who narrates the early beginnings of her daughter as gymnast, such as the young Simone flipping all over the house.

VIDEO: Unlimited Simone Biles

Source: Nike

The 19-year-old described by BBC as the most talented anyone has seen, Biles brings back memories – for those old enough to remember – of Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci who made Olympic history 40 years ago by being the first to be given a perfect “10” score in gymnastic at the 1976 Montreal Olympics.

Quartz explains Biles’s gravity-defying physics to maintaining a difficult, unstable position called a layout which involves keeping the body fully outstretched. Biles, who is in her first Olympics competition in Rio, has wowed the crowd with the layout while doing the double twist, half twist in midair, blind landing and full twist.

Her moves has made the 4’ 8” gymnast from Texas, placed in foster care by a mother grappling with alcohol and drugs and adopted by maternal grandfather and his wife at age 5, the superstar of her sport and predicted by BBC to orbit as the planet’s most recognisable star long after Rio’s flame has been extinguished.

VIDEO: The gravity-defying physics of Simone Biles