Simone Biles is the face of artistic gymnastics and has served as a global icon since she was just 19 years old.

Regarded as the best of all time, she boasts 19 World Championship titles and four Olympic gold medals. Still just 24, the world expected to see Biles return to the stage in all her glory in Tokyo this summer.

But the most decorated gymnast of all time has taught the world a huge lesson – even the best of the best are still only human.

Biles pulled out of the first gymnastics final of the 2020 Games, the all-around team event. She recorded her lowest ever score on the vault after a disappointing performance on the apparatus, then withdrew from the final with 'internal' issues. Biles later admitted to struggling with her mental health during a brave interview after Team USA won silver in the all-around.

"After the performance I did, I just didn’t want to go on,” she said. "I have to focus on my mental health. I just think mental health is more prevalent in sports right now.

"We're not just athletes. We're people at the end of the day and sometimes you just have to step back."

Biles was expected to compete in five individual events following the team final but withdrew from all but the balance beam earlier this week. 

An inspired performance earned her a bronze medal, equalling her performance on the apparatus from the 2016 Games in Rio.

Off the back of her incredible comeback, Biles has once again opened up the shutters and bared all in a new raw and hard-hitting interview.

The 24-year-old admitted the abuse she and many others suffered at the hands of paedophile and sex offender Larry Nassar still remains a trigger that is deeply embedded into her memory. 

"Now that I think of it, maybe in the back of my head, probably, yes," she said on the Today Show when asked if it affected her Tokyo performance. "Because there are certain triggers that you don't even know. And I think [the abuse] could have [affected me]."

Biles unveiled the truth of her abuse in 2018, a year after the former USA Gymnastics physician pleaded guilty to his horrifying crimes. The four-time Olympic champion was just one of Nassar's hundreds of victims. He was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison in 2017.

"[It weighed on me] a little bit," Biles continued in her recent interview. "But I knew that still being the face of gymnastics and the USA and everything we've brought, it's not going to be buried under the rug and it will still be a very big conversation.

"We have to protect those athletes and figure out why it happened, who knew what [and] when."