Simone Biles proved her greatness again on Thursday in Paris, winning the women’s individual all-around final to win her sixth Olympic gold medal and second of the 2024 Games.
Biles closed the show with a soaring floor exercise, just like in the women’s team final two days earlier, and won her second gold medal of the tournament by more than a point over her nearest rival, Rebeca Andrade of Brazil.
Despite some strong performances from Andrade and Biles’ teammate, defending all-around winner Sunisa Li, the result was merely a formality when the unbeatable 27-year-old took to the mat.
Biles’ 15.066 points gave her a total score of 59.131, beating Andrade by 1.119 points, while Li took the bronze medal by a further 1.5 points. Biles reclaimed the all-around title she first won in Rio 2016.
Biles celebrated her victory by embracing Lee, who marched with her under the U.S. flag, and placing a silver goat necklace around her neck, a nod to her near-unanimous status as the sport’s greatest and “greatest of all time.”
But it wasn’t as easy as it looked for Biles, who made a small mistake on the uneven bars and finished in third place behind Andrade and Algeria’s Kaylia Naimour at the midway stage.
Compared with her fight to overcome the onslaught of a “winding course” in Tokyo, Biles’ subsequent struggles to win her sixth Olympic gold medal would hardly stand out on the scale of adversity.
But just as she had done three years ago in Tokyo, when she bravely recovered from a mental block to win silver on the balance beam, it was her performance on the same apparatus that returned her to the top of the podium.
Even the best gymnasts in the world make mistakes sometimes. After starting the final with a powerful vault, Biles then stumbled on the horizontal bar, the only event that has kept her from reaching an individual final at this Olympics.
When she nearly slipped on her transition to the lower bar, missed the connection and received a score of 13.733, audible roars of surprise came from the crowd, which included other celebrities including Kendall Jenner and NBA basketball star Stephen Curry.
That was enough to vault Andrade, the 2020 vault champion, into first place, while Naimour, Algeria’s talented bars specialist, moved into second place with a high-octane score of 15.533.
Any mistake on the balance beam could have been decisive for Biles, but she thrived when it mattered, outscoring her rivals with a score of 14.566 and reclaiming the lead by 0.166 points over Andrade going into the final rotation.
That the lead was slim hardly mattered: No one has been able to match Biles on the floor exercise in recent memory, and her final competition, like the women’s team final two days earlier, ended with a victory lap and a standing ovation.
British pair Alice Kinsella and Georgia-Mae Fenton improved on their qualifying positions to finish 12th and 18th respectively.
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