{"id":43475,"date":"2024-08-01T19:59:44","date_gmt":"2024-08-01T19:59:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=43475"},"modified":"2024-08-01T19:59:46","modified_gmt":"2024-08-01T19:59:46","slug":"simone-biles-wins-first-gold-in-all-round-olympics-gymnastics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2024\/08\/01\/simone-biles-wins-first-gold-in-all-round-olympics-gymnastics\/","title":{"rendered":"Simone Biles wins first gold in All Round Olympics gymnastics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Simone Biles remains peerless. Even when she\u2019s not quite perfect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The American gymnastics star edged Brazil\u2019s Rebeca Andrade during a tense\u00a0Olympic all-around final<\/strong>\u00a0Thursday. Biles\u2019\u00a0total of 59.131 was just over a point ahead of Andrade at 57.932, one of the closest calls Biles has ever endured at a major international event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sunisa Lee, the Tokyo Olympics champion, earned bronze despite spending much of the last 15 months dealing with multiple kidney diseases<\/strong> that left her return to the Games<\/strong>very much in doubt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, the meet ended just like all the ones Biles has started and finished over the last 11 years: with hugs and gold on the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And a silver goat chain \u2014 along with a gold medal \u2014 around the Greatest of All Time\u2019s neck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt is crazy that I am in the conversation of \u2018Greatest of all athletes\u2019 because I just still think, \u2018I\u2019m Simone Biles from Spring, Texas who loves to flip,\u2018\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The margin was the smallest in a major international event since Biles captured the third of her record six world championships in 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was a teenager then. She\u2019s an icon now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 27-year-old who is redefining what a gymnast can do \u2014 and just as notably, for how long she can do it \u2014 became the third woman to become a two-time Olympic champion, joining Larisa Latynina of the Soviet Union in 1956 and 1960 and Vera Caslavska of Czechoslovakia in 1964 and 1968.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biles also is the oldest woman to claim the biggest title in her sport since then 30-year-old Maria Gorokhovskaya of the Soviet Union won the first-ever Olympic all-around in Melbourne in 1952.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the sixth gold and ninth overall medal \u2014 the same as Romanian great Nadia Comaneci, who was among the star-studded crowd that included the U.S. men\u2019s basketball team<\/strong> \u2014 of Biles\u2019 unparalleled career did not come as easy as so many that came before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She misjudged a transition on uneven bars, the weakest of her four events, letting go of the upper bar too soon and forcing her to reach for a larger-than-expect gap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While she didn\u2019t fall \u2014 Biles muscled her way back into the routine \u2014 it blunted her momentum and led to major deductions that left her trailing Andrade through two rotations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The deficit didn\u2019t last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biles responded with a largely wobble-free 14.566 on the balance beam, the highest of the night among the 24 finalists, while Andrade was forced to do a major balance check during her slightly easier set that dropped her down to second heading into floor exercise, Biles\u2019 signature event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrade, the silver medalist behind Lee in 2021, needed the best floor set of her life to catch Biles. It didn\u2019t quite happen. Andrade stepped out of bounds at one point, a minor problem but enough to create plenty of wiggle room for Biles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to compete with Rebeca no more,\u201d Biles said. \u201cI\u2019m tired. Like, she\u2019s way too close. I\u2019ve never had an athlete that close.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biles incorporated music from pop icons Taylor Swift and Beyonce into her current routine, a 75-second set that began with the opening bars of Swift\u2019s hit \u201cReady For It?\u201d and featured the hardest tumbling done by a woman in the history of the sport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When she was done \u2014 sealing gold that served as a redemption of sorts three years after pulling out of multiple finals in Tokyo to focus on her mental health \u2014 Biles sprinted to hug Lee just off the podium and blew kisses to the cameras that have become fixtures wherever she goes under the Olympic rings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the final score was announced, Biles and Lee \u2014 both Olympic champions \u2014 bolted onto the floor, waving an American flag. Lee, the Tokyo winner with Biles sidelined, is the first to win gold in all-around one Games then earn another medal in the next since Comaneci in 1976 and \u201880.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI just wanted to prove to myself that I could do it because I didn\u2019t think that I could,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While there may be more medals on the way \u2014 Biles is in three event finals later in the Games \u2014 the all-around puts her into the conversation as perhaps the greatest American Olympian ever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biles is no longer the prodigy who triumphed in Rio de Janeiro eight years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019s married and a vocal advocate for survivors of sexual abuse and the importance of proper mental health. She openly volunteered after the Americans won gold in the team final on Tuesday that she met with her personal therapist that morning to help get her in the right mindset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biles relied on the internal work she\u2019s done over the years after that rocky bars routine. She sat with her legs crossed on a chair in her blue sequined leotard and closed her eyes, immune to the cameras that followed her every move.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When she opened them, she was ready to move on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s what she does. She has said repeatedly over the last three years that what happened in Tokyo is a part of her past, not a part of her present, and if critics have a problem with it, that\u2019s their issue, not hers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019s moved on to bigger things. Like setting a standard that may never be reached.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her sport. And maybe all others, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Simone Biles remains peerless. Even when she\u2019s not quite perfect. The American gymnastics star edged Brazil\u2019s Rebeca Andrade during a tense\u00a0Olympic all-around final\u00a0Thursday. Biles\u2019\u00a0total of 59.131 was just over a point ahead of Andrade at 57.932, one of the closest calls Biles has ever endured at a major international event. Sunisa Lee, the Tokyo Olympics […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,3295],"tags":[4791,6734,117,7067,2422,12758,7893,8590,9171,9478,12310,11638,7090,5918,11428,12634,10954,5783,9349,4063,12309,5913,4995,5058,11385,10222,1707,12337,823,10233,6704,733,7820,9176,6264,1217,5355,1705,7231,5273,10415,36,594],"class_list":["post-43475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-world-sport","tag-abuse","tag-basketball","tag-beyonce","tag-biles","tag-brazil","tag-captured","tag-chain","tag-conversation","tag-crowd","tag-dropped","tag-exercise","tag-forced","tag-games","tag-gold","tag-gymnastics","tag-health","tag-international","tag-kidney-diseases","tag-married","tag-melbourne","tag-men","tag-mental-health","tag-minor","tag-music","tag-olympic","tag-olympic-champion","tag-olympics","tag-rio","tag-rio-de-janeiro","tag-romanian","tag-sexual-abuse","tag-simone-biles","tag-soviet-union","tag-spring","tag-survivors","tag-taylor-swift","tag-texas","tag-tokyo","tag-union","tag-woman","tag-work","tag-world","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43479,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43475\/revisions\/43479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}