Simone Biles first Olympian to be honored with custom Twitter emoji
Twitter launched a 'greatest of all time' emoji specifically for the gymnast extraordinaire.
Olympic gymnast Simone Biles has made history on social media by becoming the first female athlete to receive her own GOAT emoji.
Days before the Olympic gymnasts start competition in Tokyo, Twitter launched a ‘greatest of all time’ emoji specifically for Biles. A short animated clip shows a goat wearing a red leotard and gold medals.
The emoji will populate when Twitter users add the hashtags ‘#SimoneBiles’ or ‘#Simone’ in messages about the Olympic Games, which kick off Friday and wrap Aug. 8.
Check out the Biles emoji via the Twitter embed below.
As previously reported by theGrio, the most decorated gymnast in history made history again in June for winning her seventh national title after another powerful performance during the U.S. Gymnastics Championships. She added a special goat symbol to her look for the event.
“introducing GOLDIE ✨ – thanks for giving her a name y’all,” Biles shared on her Instagram about the goat on her new leotard design.
“I don’t think of myself as the G.O.A.T. and that’s not why I wear the goat on my leo. It was kind of a joke in the beginning. I wore one in 2019 and it was just funny because the haters were so upset,” Biles previously said to PEOPLE. “What we did is to kind of tick them off even more. So I was happy because it’s like good, now you guys are annoyed because you’re annoying me.”
The 24-year-old shared photos of her leotards featuring a symbolic bedazzled goat located on different parts of the outfits in places ranging from the center to her arm and on her side.
“The idea was to hit back at the haters,” she told Marie Claire about the symbolism behind it.
During the interview, Biles shared how she came up with the concept.
“I didn’t feel like it was necessarily fair how they could keep saying whatever they wanted, but then if I said something, it wasn’t fair,” Biles said.
“[The haters] were joking like, “I swear, if she put a goat on her leo, blah, blah, blah.” That would make them so angry. And then I was like, ‘Oh, that’s actually a good idea. Let’s make the haters hate it, and the fans love it.’ And so that’s exactly what we did and why we did it.”
Biles is known globally as the G.O.A.T., which stands for the ’Greatest of All Time,’ of gymnastics.
Everyone from fans to sports gurus to supporters acknowledges her greatness, which includes four Olympic gold medals and one bronze medal, 25 World Championship medals, including nineteen gold, and four gymnastics skills named after her.
The Olympics are set to kick off July 23 in Tokyo, Japan after being pushed back due to the coronavirus pandemic.
This story contains additional reporting from Biba Adams and Hannah Joy.
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