Dominique Dawes will watch Simone Biles this week with excitement, and not a tinge of nervousness.

“I’m not the one on the balance beam,” said Dawes, the last American female gymnast to compete in three Olympic Games before Biles matches the feat in Paris. “It will be fun. I want her to do well.”

Dawes was in Colorado Springs as part of Downtown Summer Fest on Saturday, a celebration that brought hundreds of people to the Olympic and Paralympic Museum and its surrounding area. Dawes spoke to the crowd about her experience in the sport and her efforts since retirement to bring about changes to guard against the mental, physical and spiritual toll that can occur within gymnastics – or any youth sport – when a win-at-any-cost mentality outweighs the need for life balance.

PHOTOS: Downtown Summer Fest at the Olympic and Paralympic Museum

“I think it’s common sense from the parents,” Dawes told The Gazette. “I think it really does come down to the parents. Remember, the parents are the ones who are paying. Parents are the ones who are driving. Parents are the ones, maybe not necessarily adding additional pressure, but some of them do live vicariously through their children. They didn’t achieve, so they’re like, ‘My child is going to achieve.’

“The answer, really, is common sense from the parents. You have to know your child. Some kids want to be driven and pushed that way, that’s how they are wired. I think that’s how I was as a kid.”

But even with her inner drive, Dawes remembers the relief of signing with Stanford and suddenly being governed by the NCAA’s rules limiting athletes to 20 hours of training. This was down from around 40 hours per week she was enduring as an Olympic athlete.

As a parent of four, Dawes – who runs multiple gymnastics academies – has her children involved in the sport, but only to a point. When the occasion arises to skip a training session because the family is spending an evening in the backyard preparing s’mores and dangling from the playset, they have no issues doing so.

She feels the only legislative answers at a sports level to combat the ever-growing craze of youth sports would be to similarly limit participation hours.

Dawes participated in the Netflix documentary “Simone Biles Rising,” that chronicles the gymnast’s complicated career that has seen her become the most decorated American woman in the sport. Biles’ rise also brought public hardships such as her withdrawal with a case of the “twisties” in Tokyo and becoming a survivor of the Larry Nassar sexual assault scandal that resulted in the disgraced doctor being sentenced for 40 to 175 years in prison.

Biles, 27, surprised much of the world when she decided to prolong her career and make a run at the Paris Games. She enters as the favorite, having won her sixth World Championship all-around gold in Antwerp in 2023.

Dawes acknowledged that Biles, unwittingly, has brought a spotlight on many of the issues surrounding competitive gymnastics. Asked what she thought would be the most impactful way Biles could finish her career over the next week, Dawes reframed the question.

“I don’t think it would be an ending,” she said. “I think it would just be a part of her journey of trying to be a positive voice in the sport of gymnastics.”

Dawes will be watching. With her family, “building memories.”