Shawn Johnson on Simone Biles, Life After the Olympics and a New Gymnastics

It wasn’t until recently that Olympic gold medalist Shawn Johnson felt ready to move on from gymnastics, and while she’s excited to see the team compete, one of the sports she’s most excited to see is breakdancing.

The 2024 Summer Olympics will be the first time athletes will compete in breakdancing. While that seems like a surprising answer, there’s a connection between breakdancing and gymnastics. Sunny Choi, an athlete on the American breakdancing team, had dreams of being an Olympic gymnast and was on the University of Pennsylvania gymnastics team until she tore her ACL.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Johnson said when asked about the connection to gymnastics, noting the similarity between the two.

Johnson is also excited to see one of her best friends, Walker Zimmerman, play on the USA soccer team, although she acknowledged it’s likely to be a “hard journey” for the American team to win gold. “But I know It’s not impossible,” she said.

At just 16, Johnson went to her first Olympics and won six medals, including the gold for her floor routine. She hoped to return to the Olympics four years later, but a knee injury she suffered while skiing proved to be too problematic.

For years, when the Olympics came around, Johnson would watch and wish she was back competing. But something changed this year, and she said she has “no interest” in being back in the Games.

“I don’t really feel that pull to be there anymore,” she said.

Transitioning from being a celebrity athlete to be a public person through her social media presence has been a “massive evolution” for Johnson. She has 4.3 million followers on Instagram, where she shares videos of her family and tries out couples challenges with her husband. When she was competing as an athlete, her entire brand was about being “perfect.” She had to show competitors that she was “unbreakable” and “unbeatable.”

“Everything was so polished. It was so perfect,” Johnson said. “Now, I would say my brand is as far from that as humanly possible. My husband and I, we aim to just be relatable, to show people that perfection, though attainable at a competitive level, is not realistic within a lifestyle of a family.”

The competitive athlete that Johnson needed to be for partnerships when she was younger isn’t the same image she portrays today. When she chooses brands to promote, she said, everything has to align with the family’s values and morals, which is part of the reason she’s partnering with Dairy Queen. July 25 marks Miracle Treat Day and every Blizzard sold at participating locations will result in $1 being donated to children’s hospitals through Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals.

“I have worked with Children’s Miracle Network for many years,” Johnson said. “This is just such an easy, fun, amazing fundraiser for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals.”

Over the years, Dairy Queen has helped raise more than $180 million for local children’s hospitals, and Johnson is hoping to take that figure to $200 million this year.

While Johnson has focused on raising money for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals and her life after the Olympics, that doesn’t mean she isn’t going to tune in to gymnastics. At this point, she feels more like a mother to the team, questioning if they’re doing OK and joking if they need to go to Dairy Queen for a pick-me-up, she said.

This year’s Olympics team is filled with some powerhouse veterans but also features 16-year-old Hezly Rivera, who’s making her Olympics debut.

“I think there’s something so cool about the way the new team has laid themselves out,” Johnson said. “You have this statement to the world happening with USA gymnastics that it’s brand-new and better than ever…. To see four, wise, experienced, repeating girls mentoring a 16-year-old going to the Olympics, I think it’s just the most beautiful thing ever, as a former gymnast. I think Hezly is so incredibly protected by those girls.

It’s been over a decade since Johnson competed in the Olympics, and the longevity of athletes wasn’t always a priority. But seeing Simone Biles and the other athletes have “strong, powerful voices” that they use to promote the health of competitors is an evolution that Johnson has celebrated.

Biles is making her return to the Olympics this year after pulling out of several events in Tokyo because of the twisties, which made doing some of her high bar moves extremely dangerous. Johnson’s both surprised—and not surprised—that Biles decided to compete in the Olympics again.

“Not surprised because she’s Simone Biles but surprised because she has nothing to prove. She is the greatest of all time,” Johnson said. “It’s like [Michael] Jordan where he doesn’t have to because he just is, but he is coming back no matter what.”