She’s been slaying the competition for all of the 2016 Rio Olympics!
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Harrison, 26, is expected to retire from judo and has said she’s contemplating joining the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Biles, the three-time reigning all-around world champion, came into the all-around final as the heavy favorite.
Biles needed less than 13.000 points – a total she could probably manage blindfolded – on the floor, her preferred apparatus, and fittingly she was the last to perform.
It’s official: Simone Biles is the greatest gymnast in the world. “I wasn’t upset. I was just relieved that bars were over because I’ve been struggling with that”. “Those really stand out from my 50 years of coaching”. Of course she will turn in a fantastic beam and move ahead of Aliya Mustafina in the third rotation. For three years now, every all-around competition she’s entered, Biles has won.
But the Russian scored low to allow Raisman, the Olympic floor champion, to pull ahead with a flawless floor routine to snatch silver which was only bettered by Biles’s Samba performance.
If she leaves it for others to decide, Biles wins in a landslide.
Meanwhile, Raisman quietly and characteristically did some of her best work with a quiet focus. She shows the grace and strength for which she’s famous, making a series of flips and a one-foot spin look perfectly natural on a 4-inch-wide beam. When Aly started crying, I had to tell her to stop because I knew I’d start crying. “That’s just her personality”.
But she scored high enough and passed Douglas.
She’s already got one gold medal, having led the Final Five to the team title.
But she smiled instead.
Biles closed with a 15.933 in the floor exercise to take the gold. On Thursday, she got the gold medal to go with it.
She launched her challenge by nailing a hard Amanar vault scoring 15.866 despite a wobbly landing to lead Raisman by 0.233. Of course she would hit on floor exercise.
That she did, her smile as bright as the gold eyeliner she wore.
A valet to carry them all home, too. This one was a little more personal. But I feel the same.
It has not quite sunk in yet, Biles said.
Biles has a remarkable record since her debut at the 2013 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Antwerp.
Simone Biles is the best female gymnast there has ever been.
“That’s a normal score for me”, Biles said. I just have two Olympic gold medals now.
With more likely to come.
They’re key parts of the gymnastics team that set a new standard in Rio Tuesday – but today, they’re going for individual gold: Simone Biles and Aly Raisman will contend with each other and other gymnasts in the all-around competition.
But those would only add to her legend.
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A day earlier, Japan’s Kohei Uchimura added to his fantastic record in the individual all-around: He won the worlds in 2013, 2014 and 2015 and was the defending gold medalist. Not now, not ever.
