Can Simone Biles dunk a basketball? Her heroics has everyone asking the same question

Simply put, Simone Biles is a force of nature. At the 2024 Olympics in Paris on July 30, she scooped her fifth Olympic gold medal with Team USA as they retained their Artistic Gymnastics Women Team title.

Biles, 27, and her team-mates impressed in all four competitions in vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor.

4'8" Biles' performance on the floor got a lot of people talking on social media ; it's well known she can jump up to 12 feet in the air and during her Olympic final floor routine, she seemed to jump 11.8 feet high.

To put that into perspective, a basketball hoop is 10 feet high and because of this, it's got a lot of people asking once again - can Simone Biles dunk?

Doing very basic maths, yes, Biles could in theory slam dunk a basketball if she jumps this high.

But one thing those buying into this theory are seemingly forgetting is that the floor all gymnasts perform on is springy.

This is to give gymnasts a boost in their jumps and to help prevent any potential injury to lower joints, especially when they land - imagine all that force from that height going through knees and ankles on a hard floor... Ouch.

So although Biles can jump insanely high with the help of the spring floor, as basketball is played on hard courts, Biles would not be able to dunk in normal circumstances.

In 2017, when Biles was just 20-years-old, she did dunk for the Harlem Globetrotters but had the help of a springboard.

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