Simone Biles is Sports Illustrated‘s 2024 Sportsperson of the Year, the magazine announced on Thursday. Colorado football Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter was named Breakout Star of the Year.
SI named Simone the Sportsperson of the Year “because she won gold, and then another gold, and then another; because she changed the face of her sport and the conversations around athletes in general.”
Simone Biles is SI’s 2024 Sportsperson of the Year ? https://t.co/Fm4hAkpY45 pic.twitter.com/JYyp8OKG6V
— Sports Illustrated (@SInow) January 2, 2025
Other honorees include Basketball Hall of Famer Dikembe Mutombo, who received the Muhammad Ali Legacy Award, and NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman, who was named the inaugural Innovator of the Year winner.
Simone, 27, is the first Olympian to be recognized as Sportsperson of the Year since 2012 when LeBron James led the U.S. men’s basketball team gold at the London Games.
Simone has won 11 Olympic medals, including 7 gold medals. At the 2024 Tokyo Olympic Games, she won four overall medals, including gold in the team competition, individual all-around and vault.
Although she wears a diamond pendant in the likeness of a goat (greatest of all time), Simone says she’s not ready to consider the full magnitude of her legacy.
“I don’t think the reality has set in of what I’ve exactly done in the sport. I can see it, and I hear it from people, and I see a glimpse of it, but the full magnitude I don’t think I’ve realized just yet,” Simone said. “I don’t think I’ll realize ’til maybe I retire and look back in a couple years like, Damn, she was good. Because I can see that, but I do it every day. So for me, it’s normal.”
Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark won the AP Female Athlete of the Year and TIME magazine 2024 Athlete of the Year – among her many honors. But she was snubbed by Sports Illustrated.
The WNBA star has racked up awards and honors for her entertaining style of play in 2023 and 2024. Caitlin became the first person to break the NCAA scoring record since “Pistol Pete” Maravich set the record 50 years ago.
Simone Biles, Travis Hunter, Dikembe Mutombo and Jessica Berman will all be honored at the Sportsperson of the Year awards ceremony on Jan. 7 in Las Vegas.
