That’s followed by China with 45 total, 15 gold and Great Britain with 38 medals.
Advertisement
Her 14 world championship medals are the most ever won by an American woman.
Even sitting next to the runway awaiting her turn, Biles could not be missed.
For Kocian meanwhile, adding a first individual medal to the team gold won during week one, was a special moment.
Still, Hong finished second, ahead of Biles, at the 2015 world championships. Australia won the silver, beating bronze medalists Denmark by just 0.01 of a second.
“Someone could say I’m the best but then there is a whole different side of people saying I am not”. Hers was better landed-her butt grazed the mat but she stood up quickly.
Team USA is led by Simone Biles.
Sure, she’d won her third consecutive all-around title, a first for a female gymnast.
If she can win both – and she registered the top scores in both events during the individual all-around, where she earned another gold medal – she will tie American swimmer Michael Phelps’ 2016 haul of five gold medals (he also won a silver in these Games).
Sprinter Tori Bowie almost took the US over the top in the 100 meters but she was finished second behind Jamaica’s Elaine Thompson, leaving it up to the swimmers to complete the feat. Un-jong finished sixth.
“What was going through her head was “I’m being attacked for everything I do so I might as well not do anything”.
After that competition, she vowed to improve her second vault and has been even more consistent on her second vault, a Cheng, as she is on her first, an Amanar.
This final will also be partially notable for who is not competing.
Coming in fourth in the event was India’s Dipa Karmakar, who – in a daring move – executed the most hard type of vault known as the “Produnova”, which requires two front flips is seldom tried, but ended up with a score of 15,066.
And Biles, who had qualified for the eight-woman final with the highest qualifying score, was last to go, which gave her the benefit of knowing the mark to beat – Paseka’s 15.253.
There are four reigning world champions on uneven bars, since ties are not broken at worlds.
The two highest gold-medal totals in an individual Olympics for US came in years the country hosted – 1904 in St. Louis (76) and 1984 in Los Angeles (83).
The chatter that will only become louder in these Olympics is whether Biles wants to compete in Tokyo, too. But that doesn’t mean that some gymnasts didn’t try to win vault from Biles. Flávia Saraiva (Brazil) had some bobbles in team, but is wonderful on beam and a delight to watch. She’s got two more medals to win, after all.
Advertisement
Floor exercise for the women will likely come down to Biles and Raisman again.
