Simone Biles DM'ed 'Quad God' After Struggles at Olympics, 'I Know What He's Going Through'

Simone Biles, the most decorated gymnast in the sport's history, went on NBC's TODAY show on Tuesday and discussed numerous topics, including her support of American figure skater Ilia Malinin after his eighth-place finish in the Winter Olympics.

"I've definitely had a chance to bump into him," Biles, who is in Milan, Italy cheering on Team USA, said (h/t Scott Stump for today.com).

"I've sent him messages on Instagram as well. Obviously, it's all been private because I know exactly what he's going through, and I know most athletes might not be able to relate."

Biles added: "It's really, really hard to watch, but he's still an absolute legend, so I see him coming out on top after this, and we're all just cheering for him."

Malinin was in first place following the short program and entered the free skate as the resounding favorite to win gold, but he struggled and fell multiple times, leading to a 15th-place finish in the free skate en route to eighth overall.

Biles has dealt with significant adversity during the Olympics. During the Tokyo Summer Games in 2021, Biles suffered from the "twisties," which led to her withdrawing from the team final, the individual all-around and the vault, uneven bars and floor exercise individual event finals.

Biles, who won four gold medals at the 2016 Rio de Janiero Olympics, came back strong in 2024 in Paris with three golds (team, all-around, vault) and one silver (floor exercise). She has 11 Olympic medals (seven gold) and 30 World Championship medals (23 gold) lifetime.

Malinin entered the Olympics as the favorite, winning gold at the last two World Championship events. All looked well after he scored 108.16 points in the short program for a five-point lead, but the free skate did not go as planned.

Malinin spoke with TODAY about what he felt went wrong and how he can bounce back moving forward.

"I think that might be one of the mistakes I made going into that free skate was I was not ready to handle that to a full extent," he said. "So I think looking back at that, I know that now I'll be able to kind of understand how that feels, so that way I can take a different approach leading up to the next Games, hopefully."

Malinin isn't leaving the Olympics empty-handed, though, as he helped lead Team USA to gold in the team event earlier in the Games.