American gymnast Simone Biles has made history again by winning her second Olympic all-around gold medal.
Biles – who was already the most decorated gymnast before 2024 Paris Olympic Games She even started, beaming as she became the third woman to become a two-time Olympic all-around champion.
Her total score of 59.131 was just over a point ahead of Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade with 57.932, one of the closest calls Biles has ever endured at a major international event.
But it was enough for the 27-year-old to win her second gold at the Paris Olympics and her sixth Olympic gold medal overall.
Biles also broke boundaries by becoming the oldest woman to win the most important title in her sport since 1952.
The last 12 women’s Olympic champions were teenagers. The last non-teenager winner, Ludmilla Tourischeva, had turned 20 just weeks before winning in 1972.
Biles’ latest victory is a testament to her longevity as a record-setting athlete who has also established herself as a mental health champion following her shock withdrawal from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
At that time, she suffered what is known in the gymnastics world as “flips,” where the athlete loses awareness of the air and feels unable to land, creating potentially life-threatening conditions.
Biles, a survivor of sexual abuse, stayed out of the spotlight for nearly two years, during which she focused on rehabilitation and her mental health.
Her struggle while trying to recover from Tokyo has been documented in the new Netflix documentary, Simone Biles Rising, which also takes a look at Biles’ married life.
Wearing a silver goat chain (representing GOAT, or ‘Greatest of All Time’), Biles reacted to her latest win by saying, “It’s crazy that I’m in the ‘Greatest of All Athletes’ conversation because I’m still I think, ‘I’m Simone Biles from Spring, Texas, who loves to flip.'”
Since the competition against Brazilian Andrade is so close, Biles said: “I don’t want to compete with Rebeca anymore.
“I’m tired. She’s too close. I’ve never had an athlete so close.”
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Biles excited after becoming the most decorated gymnast
Jump to bear its name after the historic double pike vault
Biles made the last-minute decision to use her signature Yurchenko double pike jump as she was worried about getting caught by Andrade.
“I thought, ‘I guess this time I have to bring out the big guns,'” he said.
She is the only woman to perform the extremely difficult jump, also known as Biles II. She scored a huge 15.766 and made up for her mistake on the bars during the second rotation.
“After bars, when I saw the score go up I thought, ‘Thank God we did the double pike today,’ because I wasn’t planning on it,” she said.
Biles performs on vault during the general final. Photo: AP
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Biles incorporated music from pop icons Taylor Swift and Beyonce into her current routine, a 75-second performance that began with the opening bars of Swift’s hit Ready For It? and featured the hardest cartwheel performed by a woman in the history of the sport.
When asked about the eight-year gap between her all-around gold medals, Biles said, “It feels amazing. I was a little naïve in the process. So I appreciate my craft a little more.”
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