Simone Biles finishes with four golds at 2023 Gymnastics World Championships
Five medals, four of them gold, after not competing for two years. Only Simone Biles can pull that off.
Biles capped her first major international competition since the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 with two more golds Sunday, winning the titles on both balance beam and floor exercise. She also won golds in the team competition and all-around, and a silver on vault.
She’s the most-decorated gymnast in history, male or female, with 37 medals at the world championships and Olympics. Of those, a whopping 27 are gold.
Even more astonishing? In her six appearances at the world championships over the last decade, she’s made 33 finals … and won medals in 30 of them. For those not so great with the math, that’s a 91% success rate. In a sport where Biles is flipping and twisting 10 feet in the air and on a beam that’s 4-inches wide, that’s staggering.
These are the first world championships since 2019 for Biles, and she wasn’t sure how she’d fare. After all, she only returned to competition in early August after taking time off from the Tokyo Olympics. She also knew she’d have to deal with triggers in the team competition, which is where “the twisties” surfaced in Tokyo.
Rising anxiety from the high expectations on her and the isolation of COVID protocols caused her to lose her sense of where she is in the air. Unwilling to risk her health and safety, she withdrew from all but one final.
But Biles appeared relaxed and confident. And really, really, really good.
Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade has emerged as a formidable rival for Biles, and the competition seemed to motivate her.
Her balance beam routine was near-perfect Sunday, the best she’s done since she’s come back. Though she had too much power on her third tumbling pass, her signature Biles I, and bounced forward, landing with one foot out of bounds, the landings of her tumbling runs got much cleaner throughout the week. She also seems to be performing more, making eye contact and playing to the crowd.
She and Andrade went 1-2 on the floor, as well as in the all-around. The order was reversed in Saturday’s vault final. And in the beam, Biles took first while Andrade finished third.
Biles has been trying not to look too far ahead. But with this performance, she’s established she’s the one to beat. Just as she’s been for a decade.
