On a day of firsts for Olympic golf, Marcus Fraser of Australia had the one that mattered – the first-round lead.
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Biles was too young for London 2012, not that she was competitive with any member of the Fierce Five then anyway.
Biles took the gold with a total of 62.198.
Simone Biles after winning the women’s all-around gymnastics competition Thursday in Rio de Janeiro. This is the final Olympics for team coach Martha Karolyi. The tears flowed freely down Biles’ face as she received her medal, following a dazzling performance on the floor exercise. And now, she’ll spend the rest of the Rio Games collecting more golds in the individual event finals while the debate will start about whether she’s the best ever. And when she landed her final double pike somersault, you could see the emotion on her face.
Biles, 19, is the Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps, Muhammad Ali, Wayne Gretzky, Jesse Owens of her sport.
The 22-year-old from MA, captain of the United States women’s gymnastics team for the second consecutive Olympics, had just nailed the most important 90 seconds of her career. While Douglas had the third-highest score in qualifications for the all-around event, she was unable to participate in the final since each country is only allowed two gymnasts each.
Some of her fellow competitors believe that’s exactly where the 4-foot-8 dynamo is heading.
“I knew Simone was going to win”, Raisman said.
“That’s a normal score for me”, Biles said.
In today’s competition, Biles starred in all events but particularly scored above 15 – 15.933, 15.866 and 15.433 – in floor exercise, vault and balance beams.
It gets a little trickier after that, if only because of unfortunate timing. As 2008 all-around champ Nastia Liukin recently told the New York Times, “normally the separations between first and second place could be three-tenths or five-tenths and she goes out and wins by one or two points”.
Biles needed to shine on the balance beam to regain her lead-and she did just that. I think not-Biles is truly magnificent, and she’ll now go down in history as the fourth consecutive US gymnast to take home the all-around gold. “Those are the culminations of our career”. She looks very calm, very relaxed and very poised.
US women’s gymnastics is working on taking over the sport with back-to-back Olympic gold medals and world championships in 2011, 2014 and 2015.
Biles, Raisman and their coaches Aimee Boorman and Mihai Brestyan hugged as cameramen surrounded them. I’m just the same Simone.
Harrison has spoken out about sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of a former coach, which began when she was 13 and lasted for three years, taking place at times when they traveled to judo competitions.
The gold medal hanging around her neck says it all.
“Nobody has done that”, she said. It was still good enough for a 15.866, which just happened to be the top score of the day. “I just do my gymnastics”.
“She is making history, she is breaking records left, right and centre”.
With appropriately gold glitter shadow rimming her eyes, Simone Biles kicked off the women’s gymnastics all-around competition at the 2016 Olympics with her Amanar vault, the trickiest one that women perform, with two-and-a-half twists before landing facing forward.
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RIO DE JANEIRO For American gymnast Aly Raisman, a silver medal in Thursday’s all-around event was a moment of redemption after the heartbreak of 2012 when she was on the wrong side of a tiebreak and bumped from the podium.
