Biles soared… and when she finally returned to earth she was wrapped in gold
IN the end, all they could do was clap their chalked hands and laugh. That went for the Brazilian and the American in their doomed pursuit and it went to deeper shades of awe for anyone else fortunate enough to witness a true wonder of the sporting world.
That Simone Biles is once more the Olympic all-around champion is no great surprise, but with this 4ft 8in giant, the sense of amazement doesn’t so much creep up on you as slap your face with a tiny hand.
You can expect greatness and you can predict results but you cannot possibly prepare for how astonishing it will look when a human embarrasses the birds with her gift of flight.
She vaulted close to perfection. She twisted the beam, her nemesis not so long ago, into a child’s toy. And she wiped the floor with the best gymnasts in the world to such an extent that a slightly botched turn on the uneven bars did not matter a jot.
By the time the scores were finalised, shortly before 8.30pm local time, we had weaved our way to a magnificently familiar conclusion: Simone Biles, miles better than the rest.
Her status as the star of these Olympics depended on her putting on a show in her sport’s blue riband event and what a show it was. What a ribbon with which she wrapped this chapter of her career, for this was the 27-yearold’s second gold medal in the space of a week, her sixth in three Games and ninth in all.
Allied with the team title collected a few nights back, this taller glory tied the record held by Nadia Comaneci, albeit with the American holding one more of the shiniest colour. It also made Biles the first woman since 1968 to win the allaround title twice.
If we are to dwell a little longer on the numbers, her tally of 59.131 was something of a landslide win. The next best, Rebeca Andrade of Brazil, the Tokyo silver medallist, was 1.119 points behind. That’s huge in these halls. Then there was Biles’s teammate, Sunisa Lee, 2.666 astern.
Now for some necessary context, because Biles was here with redemption to achieve. It has been three years since Tokyo went so awfully wrong for her, most conspicuously with an attack of the twisties — a bizarrely jolly term for losing your sense of orientation when upside down.
That is terrifying in such a dangerous workplace and for Biles a lot of therapy has been needed, and is still needed, to correct it. ‘Three years ago I never thought I’d set foot on a gymnastics floor again,’ said Biles, who still has three medals to aim for in Paris. ‘Even this morning at 7am I spoke to my therapist. I never thought I’d be on a world stage again.
‘I’m super proud of my performance and the fight I’ve had to get back competing again on the world stage. I couldn’t be prouder.’ The victory, which only briefly seemed in jeopardy, looked on the cards from the first rotation. In Biles’s case that meant the vault.
We will skirt the advanced mathematics with which these matters are calculated but here’s an illustration of what dominance looks like — Andrade, who won the individual vault title in Tokyo, set herself a difficulty tariff of five and was close to perfect in execution. She scored 15.100.
Biles? Her Yurchenko double pike, also known as the Biles II, carried a difficulty of 6.4, because she simply does things the others cannot. With a score of 15.766 she was already flipping her way to a 0.666 lead. Devilishly good. Next up was the uneven bars, her weakest apparatus and her only blip. A poor transition from high to low forced her to tuck knees and lose speed, so her 13.733 dropped her to third.
The risk at that point was needing to push beyond comfort on the beam. That 10cm strip of wood was her tool of torture when the twisties struck. But a score of 14.566 had her back in the lead and back on firm ground.
It was at that moment Andrade reached out and patted her on the back. She knew what they all knew — if you are to catch Biles, you will not do it on the floor. Not when she reaches higher into the air than any athlete to ever live. Needing around 14 points to win, she was immense — 15.066.
In the minute or so that it took the scores to be read out, no one bothered with the notion of suspense. Some things are obvious. The greatest of all time is quite simply a joyous assault on the senses and no amount of medals seems able to weigh her down.