Aimee Boorman formed Simone Biles on the gymnastics world. Now the American is supposed to prepare the Stuttgart training group around Helen Kevric for the home European Championships in Leipzig-and ensure a different atmosphere at the base.
Aimee Boorman has been in Stuttgart since the beginning of March. It was appointed as a trainer – First as a fee for five months. The 51-year-old is to prepare the training group around Olympic participant Helen Kevric and Marlene Gotthardt for the home European Championships in Leipzig (end of May) and for the European Youth Festival (Eyof) in Croatia. After the allegations of abuse at the federal support point and after the exemption of two coaches, she wants to close the resulting personnel.
“I don’t know anything about what happened here. I am here to prepare these young women as a coach,” said the long-time coach of US superstar Simone Biles on Wednesday, “I just want to be my role.
Aimee Boorman forms Simone Biles as the world’s best gymnast
If you want to understand the training philosophy and the mindset of Aimee Boorman, you should take a closer look at the long-term cooperation between her and Simone Biles, the world’s best gymnast, decorated with seven Olympic gold medals and 23 World Cup titles. In twelve years, Boorman and Biles developed into a narrow human and sporty successful community.
On August 12, 2016, TV pictures of the Olympic Games in Rio beamed this connection to the heart into the world. US gymnastics Simone Biles and her trainer Aimee Boorman were in the arms. Both wiped tears of joy. The 1.43 meter power pack Biles has just won its second Olympic gold medal in all-around. In total, the 19-year-old won four gold and once bronze in Rio.
The special feature of the relationship illustrated a post from the gymnast after winning the gold medal. Under a photo of himself and Booran wrote the gymnastics star: “I didn’t come here alone. Thanks to the world’s best trainer ❤️ I love you”
Social media contribution on Instagram: Simone Biles’ declaration of love to Aimee Boorman
Booran wants to convey fun gymnastics
Twelve years earlier, Boorman had taken the seven -year -old Simone under her wing. “It noticed because she was very small but very muscular,” the trainer later recalled. It was primarily about the girl enjoying gymnastics. She did not want to prevent this great talent through oversized expectations. The motivation for the training work of a coach, said Booran in 2023 in a podcast, “should not be participation in the Olympic Games. It should be love to promote young athletes so that they grow and become the people they want. All the skills they learn in gymnastics make them better in the long term – if you treat them correctly.”
Simone Biles and US trainer Aimee Boorman at Olympia 2016 in Rio
Boorman, born in Chicago, carefully developed Biles. The relationship between the trainer and gymnast, says Boorman, is generally a special one. Gymnasts relied on their coaches and thoughts: “I have to trust you to ensure that I don’t end up on my head and bring me up, be paralyzed or a bone breaks. This trust takes years to build up.”
Aimee Boorman goes off completely
Boorman carefully built up this relationship of trust with Simone Biles. She made sure that they could develop at their own pace. Biles gave later successes and gave Boorman’s modern training style right. She had to fight many resistance. For years she had been accused of being too nice to be successful. “What a terrible concept,” says Borman. But she was not put off, she never wanted to be a advocate of the “old school”, consisting of discipline, absolutely obedience and harsh hierarchy. But this was a long time in the United States. “We followed this Eastern Bloc Mentality to turn gymnasts small robot soldiers. But that wasn’t what I wanted.” The merciless leaves Boorman completely.
Of course, she knows that it is about top performance in competitive sports. She also thinks it is important that trainers demand their athletes. “But I don’t think athletes should be pushed to their limits,” she says. What is a challenge for one athlete is already a stress limit for the other. It is all the more important to her to take a close look at her protégés. The most important thing is body language.
When you work with children, they usually don’t tell you how they feel. But you can see it on her body.
Aimee Booran, trainer
Boorman is even the mother of three boys. “I see if one of my children is about to switch off. Then I have to reorient myself and think about how I deal with the situation. As a coach, you have to think like a child, but like an adult. “She is not a trained child psychologist, she emphasizes, but she has a lot of experience, have studied a lot and spoke to experts. A sound training and knowledge of human beings are important for trainers. Friendliness in dealing with her fellow human beings is the most normal thing in the world for Booran. This also includes apologizing if it is indicated – also or especially with young gymnastics.
Aimee Booran: “Why do you have to be mean to achieve something?”
“When I looked at a child and realized that I had hurt it with my words, I apologized, and I still do that. I apologize to my children when I blush because I don’t bring my message over.” Many adults are too proud to say: “I see, I have hurt your feelings.” Boorman never wants to leave her path of human -friendly handling in competitive sports. “Why do you have to be mean to achieve something? I made sure that I could keep my friendliness.”
Perhaps the reason for this attitude lies in Boorman’s own childhood and in her own experience as a young gymnast. “When I look back, I see that they (the coaches, dr) were cruel to me. As a trainer, I never want to give a child the feeling that I had as a child back then.” Her mother was a single parent, gymnastics was an expensive sport in the USA. So she started working as a teenager to be able to pay for her fees. Already with 13 jobbte Borman as a coach in a gym. At the end of 20 she took Simone Biles under her wing.
Aimee Boorman was like a mother for Simone Biles
Booran was like a mother for the girl. She knew about her protégé’s severe childhood. Biles was only three when she and her three siblings were taken away by her mother because she was ill. The child was then adopted by her grandparents living in Texas, later Biles described them as their parents. Boorman helped the young athlete with a strict training plan (“30 hours a week together”), positive support in difficult times and lots of love to form her as a probably greatest gymnast of all time. “I practically belong to the family,” says Booran about her many invitations to the Biles family’s birthday parties.
The topic of nutrition, which plays a major role in gymnastics, was not a particularly important factor in the Biles/Booran team. In the twelve years that she trained Biles, she never had to pay attention to her diet, Boorman said in an interview in 2019. “She knows what her body is good for. She doesn’t do a certain diet. And she loves cinnamon snails and pizza.”
Like a mother: trainer Aimee Boorman and Simone Biles
Biles could always build on the backing of her trainer. It even went so far that Boorman supported her gymnast when she refused to go to the training camp of the US national team under coaching legend Marta Karolyi (“she belonged to an older generation from the Eastern Bloc”). At the time, this refusal was considered a majesty insult. “I supported Simone and told her that it was okay. We were not invited to the training camp again. But we have proven that you can refuse and still win the national title.” Because that’s exactly what Simone Biles did.
Due to this extraordinary commitment between Biles and Borman, the two -time jump world champion McKayla Maroney 2016 said in a podcast:
I know that Simone’s trainer Aimee smiles her what I totally envy her.
Turn world champion McKayla Maroney (2016)
Boorman is convinced that good trainers always include their athletes in the processes. “Big coaches make sure that their athletes can have a say,” she says. Even with the possible consequence that a gymnast does not want to go the path taken to the end. She said to Biles: “You can stop jumping at any time. If you don’t want to go this way, we don’t have to. You can continue to be great and put a fantastic college career down and leave what you want. You don’t have to be a top gymnast.”
After Rio’s Olympic Games, the paths of Biles and Boorman separated. While Biles made a Sabbath year, Boorman von Spring/Texas (here she had coached the world-class gymnast in the World Champions Center of the parents of Biles) to Florida. There she became managing director and elite coordinator in a gymnastics center in Sarasota. It was a farewell to two people who will always remain connected: Boorman: “We are both close, and it will always stay that way.”
Later, Booran was female in the meantime assistant coach of the Dutch Tour Team. She looked after the team around the 2021 Olympic Games in Tokyo. From this time, contact with the Dutch Gerben Wiersma, the current national coach of women. He is said to have proposed Boorman for the activity in Stuttgart.
When asked what they want to give their gymnasts, Boorman said: “The most beautiful thing for me is when athletes who I have trained as children for years have had such positive experiences in gymnastics that they want to enable their own children the same. They have made gymnastics the people they are – and they like themselves as they are. For me, this is the best legacy.”
Many also want this Spirit Aimee Boorans for gymnastics in Germany.
Prize on Wed., March 19, 2025 6:40 p.m., SWR1 Baden-Württemberg
