The number of world-championship gold medals Biles has won, the most ever by a female gymnast.
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Number of consecutive USA all-around championships Biles has won (2013 to 2016), making her the third woman to do so.
On Sunday she averaged 15.966 points across her two vault attempts to earn gold. But she upgraded one of her two vaults – the Cheng – to make it more competitive with the top vaulters.
For her next vault, Biles turned to a Cheng – a hard vault that, compared to the Amanar, is worth an extra tenth of a point on the judges’ scale – and performed it almost flawlessly.
After a solid score on her first vault, Hong went for the unicorn, but she couldn’t finish the third rotation and fell backwards upon landing.
Her male counterpart, Japan’s Kohei Uchimura was hailed as “the greatest of all time” by Comaneci after he sustained his all around winning streak for eight years, winning Olympic golds in 2012 and 2016 in addition to a record six successive world titles.
Speaking after the event, Biles said she wanted to stick the Amanar “so badly here and it didn’t happen”. Biles posted a picture from “WAY back then” on social media shortly ahead of the competition next to a picture from Monday.
Switzerland’s Giulia Steingruber came in third behind Paseka with a 15.216, making her the first Swiss woman to earn an Olympic necklace for gymnastics. She held on for a bronze medal behind Maria Paseka of Russian Federation.
“Winning the silver used to be the biggest failure and now whoever gets the silver is delighted because the gold belonged to Simone for a long time”, said the 54-year-old, who is the last woman to have won all around medals (gold in 1976 and silver in 1980) at successive Games.
While the scrapping of the 10.0 scoring system following a judging scandal at the 2004 Athens Olympics means gymnasts can no longer attain perfection – according to the judges anyway – to others, Biles could not have done anything more.
In other individual competitions Sunday, Madison Kocian won the silver medal in the uneven bars, and Alex Naddour won the bronze for his pommel horse routine. You may recall the terminology from McKayla Maroney’s vaults four years ago. Raisman, the 2012 gold medalist in the event, was the next closest in qualifying with a 6.6.
The vault final included a wide field of gymnasts in Rio Olympic Arena.
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For the second competition in a row – on this occasion the individual all-around – she was in a class of her own leading to the septuagenarian former coach of Nadia Comaneci and the American “magnificent seven” in 1996 to suggest the sport has never seen anyone.
