Her father left and young Simone bounced back and forth from her mother’s house to foster homes. Her glitter makeup and the sequined stars and stripes on her red, white and blue leotard sparkled under the bright lights. She was ready to have fun. She is the only gymnast ever to score a flawless ten in back to back Olympics.
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Biles’ approach to her sport has paid off. She was edged by less than a half a point. “I’ll just pray normally to myself, but I have it there in case”, the 19-year-old told the magazine in a July 8 interview. Which she nearly never does and rarely is.
Biles erased whatever lingering doubts there were about whether she’s the greatest gymnast of all time Thursday, winning the Olympic all-around title in a rout.
The Soviet Union won eight successive women’s team golds between 1952 and 1980, but in recent years Russians have slipped off the podiums as American gymnasts have taken a stranglehold of the sport. She brought me to tears and I was weeping. “I felt every emotion at once”. “When you have fun that’s when you’re most successful”.
Asked if her Olympic triumph confirmed her as greatest ever, she shrugged, giggled and shook her head.
When national team coordinator Martha Karolyi was asked whom she would deem the best, she gave the names of two gymnasts who won gold 40 years apart: Nadia Comaneci, from Karolyi’s homeland of Romania, practitioner of the ideal 10, and Biles, who performs tricks that have shot the sport into another galaxy. “‘Cause she’s very precise”. “Simone is so exciting”.
“From 1976 to 2016 that’s quite a few years and the gymnastics is so different and the skills are more hard”. With Nadia we wanted to come close to perfection.
The team were on the first of two rest days before the competition resumes on Sunday with the women’s uneven bars and vault final.
That’s because gold has been out of reach for everyone but Biles for three years and counting.
Nadia Comaneci may be the greatest bar legend of all time due to her remarkable consistency and her ability to get flawless tens multiple times.
She completed the beam without a hitch before watching Raisman do the same. Her hands were so small she couldn’t hold onto the bar. Biles earned the first one on Tuesday while serving as the exclamation point to retiring national team coordinator Martha Karolyi’s going away party.
In just over a week Biles and Manuel will be headed home, both hailed as trailblazers and more famous than they could ever have imagined.
“You’ve seen her legs and butt”, Boorman said. “That’s just her personality”. “You have to be fearless”.
Biles was born in OH to parents with drug and alcohol addiction problems. She and her siblings were sent to foster care, where she vaguely remembers a trampoline in the yard.
Biles’ hometown is Spring, Texas, which is in the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston.
In order to preserve the household furniture from destruction, Biles was enrolled in gymnastics classes. “When she makes up her mind, it’s, like, oh my gosh – the whole world could be upset and she’d still do it”. Raisman says Biles is “in a different league”. The note reads: “We couldn’t be any happier for you!”
Aly Raisman took silver, getting redemption after missing a medal on a technicality at the London games.
Long resigned to the fact no one would beat the sensational Biles, Mustafina instead rejoiced in her bronze – the same medal she collected in London 2012. But she enjoyed it so much, she immersed herself fully into her passion by age 9.
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Simone Biles and Aly Raisman stood side by side in Rio Olympic Arena, clutching each other while waiting for the inevitable coronation.
