In her new memoir I’m That Girl: Living the Power of My Dreams, out March 4, Jordan Chiles recalls the difficult moment she learned that her best friend, Simone Biles, had been abused by Larry Nassar.
Chiles and Biles both trained at the now-closed Karolyi Ranch National Team Training Center in Huntsville, Texas, where now-imprisoned doctor Nassar sexually abused hundreds of female gymnasts. And, while Chiles shares in her book that she was never one of Nassar’s victims, the same wasn’t true for Biles.
“When that whole thing happened, trust me, I was devastated,” Chiles tells PEOPLE. “Still, to this day, I’ve never talked to her about it. I don’t think I ever will talk to her about it because that was her life, and you never know how hard it is on somebody.”
Though the two women never openly discussed the abuse, Chiles says that she supported her friend and teammate with quality time, and that they often would eat dinner together.
“I think just having my presence was the best thing that I could give to her, rather than sitting down somewhere and having a whole conversation because that’s very devastating,” Chiles adds. “If we ever have the conversation, I would literally probably [just] cry.”
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Chiles and Biles have been close since first meeting in 2014, and it was Biles who inspired Chiles to train at her gym, World Champions Centre in Texas, after Chiles finally parted ways with a coach Chiles only refers to in her book as “Coach X.”
“Simone has done so much to not only encourage me but keep my confidence up in ways that I didn’t know I needed,” says Chiles. “Her energy helps me understand life.”
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The two have only grown closer as Olympic teammates — during the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Chiles stepped in last-minute on two additional events after Biles withdrew, helping Team USA to score silver, and Biles also penned the foreword to the new memoir.
“She is a very, very strong woman,” says Chiles. “We both had the same goals. We both had things that we wanted to accomplish … and look at her now, she’s a three-time Olympian, she has a husband, she’s a dog mom. She’s done great things, and she gets to continue on [in] her life without having to really focus on what her past was.”
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