Simone Biles arrived in Paris as a heavy favorite to win a second all-around Olympic gymnastics gold medal and she backed up the hype while fighting through brief adversity on the way to a 1.199-point margin over a star-studded field in the women's final on Thursday.
The 27-year-old Texan won the event at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro but ceded the title to U.S. teammate Suni Lee at the 2020 Tokyo Games after suffering a much-publicized case of the "twisties." Biles earned a first gold in these Games in the team final on Tuesday, establishing herself as the winningest Olympic gymnast in U.S. history.
Her nine medals (six gold, one silver, two bronze) are two better than Shannon Miller, who won two golds, two silvers and three bronzes across the 1992 and 1996 Games.
Brazil's Rebecca Andrade finished second on Thursday to get silver and Lee took the bronze in the first Olympic matchup of past all-around champions. Lee became the first gold medalist to return to the podium in the next Olympics since Romania's Nadia Comaneci went gold/bronze in 1976 and 1980.
It's the third time the U.S. has placed two gymnasts on the all-around podium.
Biles, who placed first ahead of Andrade and Lee in the all-around qualifying round on Sunday, got things started Thursday with prodigious elevation on a vault that yielded a score of 15.766 that was nearly a half-point better than the 15.300 she'd posted Sunday.
Stop what you’re doing right NOW and watch Simone Biles on floor! 🐐 #ParisOlympics
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It gave her an immediate all-around standings cushion over Andrade, who'd won vault gold and took silver in all-around behind Lee in 2020.
Andrade rebounded to take a slight overall lead Thursday after bettering Biles by nearly a full point on the uneven bars, and the American dropped into third for a bit when Algeria's Kaylia Nemour posted a rotation-best 15.333.
But it didn't last long after Biles, the reigning world champion on the balance beam, worked her way through a jittery, but error-free, routine on the apparatus and ultimately stuck the landing with a smile and a relieved sigh to earn a 14.566. Lee scored a 14.000 that was a tick down from her qualifying score and Andrade's less-than-pristine 14.133 effort was also down a bit from Sunday and dropped her back to second.
That gave the ebullient Biles a workable, if not comfortable, edge heading to her office on the floor exercise, where she closed the competition and drew a roof-raising cheer while testing gravity across four tumbling passes and scoring a gold-clinching 15.066.
The win made her just the third woman to win two all-around golds and the oldest all-around champion since the Soviet Union's Mariya Gorokhovskaya, who won at the 1952 Games in Helsinki at age 30.
