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‘Grandma’ Aly Raisman and ‘baby’ Simone Biles

Simone Biles, Aly Raisman

FILE - In this Sept. 12, 2015, file photo, U.S. gymnasts Aly Raisman, right, and Simone Biles stretch before a training session at the Karolyi Ranch in New Waverly, Texas. Stardom, the kind that truly changes a life, awaits Biles. The two-time defending world all-around champion will go for a three-peat at the 2015 championships in Glasgow, Scotland starting this weekend. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip, File)

AP

Aly Raisman and Simone Biles have a unique relationship on the U.S. women’s gymnastics team.

“She’s like our sleeping little grandma,” Biles said of Raisman.

“She always says that I sleep a lot,” Raisman said. “She looks at me like I’m the crazy one, but I think she’s the crazy one, because it’s normal to be tired when you work out a lot, but she’s just never tired.”

They’re likely to spend a lot of time together over the next seven months, maybe even the rest of the year, at national team camps, competitions, perhaps even the Olympics and a post-Olympic tour.

Biles, the 18-year-old, three-time reigning World all-around champion, felt inspired watching Raisman’s gold medal-winning floor exercise routine at the London 2012 Olympics.

“I wanted to be just like her, and floor was like my specialty also,” said Biles, who also won floor exercise gold at the 2013, 2014 and 2015 Worlds.

Raisman, 21, can become the oldest U.S. Olympic women’s artistic gymnast since 2004 this year. She and Gabby Douglas are in line to become the first women to make back-to-back Olympic gymnastics teams since 2000.

If there’s anything keeping the consummate leader Raisman up at night, it’s the energetic Biles.

“We’re kind of pretty much similar in the gym, but outside of the gym, I’m passed out sleeping, and she’s eating candy and jumping up and down on the beds,” Raisman said in November.

“There’s sometimes when I see her eating candy, and I literally just like snatch it from her, because that’s the last thing that she needs. She was eating these energy things the other day and I was just like, she’s not gonna sleep for like a month. She’s just crazy all the time. So I don’t know. Simone reminds me of that little kid that just doesn’t sit still. ... I watch how much sugar she has. She was drinking tea, and she put seven packets of sugar in her tea. It was a small cup of tea, and I was like, ‘That is the last thing that you need, and that’s disgusting.’

“I mean, one packet of sugar is sweet enough. She put seven in a small cup. ... So I took it away from her, and she was mad at me. I was like, ‘Sorry, I’m your mom.’”

What about Raisman, what kind of grandmotherly advice does she dole out?

“Go to bed early,” Biles joked.

Raisman, though, sees a little bit of herself in Biles. Never sitting still, except when she’s napping of course.

“If I were to stop doing gymnastics, I would probably be bouncing off the walls all the time,” Raisman said. “Worse than Simone.”

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