The #Gymnastics superstar Simone Biles knows how to stay cool under pressure in the #Olympic Games. The scoreboard added an exclamation point.
Advertisement
Simone Biles cemented herself as the greatest gymnast of all time with her all-around win in Rio on Thursday. She and Raisman joined Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson in 2008 as the only US gymnasts to win gold and silver in the same Olympic final.
Karolyi called Biles a “force of nature”. “I just want her to love life”. “It didn’t really bother me”.
Biles soared to the all-around title on Thursday night, putting the gap between herself and everyone else on full display for the whole world to see.
Adilson da Silva put golf back into the Olympics for the first time in 112 years when the lone Brazilian in the field sent his tee shot right down the middle of the fairway.
Biles went to Raisman, but she had to pull away quickly because she was about to start crying, too. We know that all the girls in the world want to be like her as her success will be the biggest inspiration for future generations of gymnasts.
She’s instinctive. She can be the goofiest person in the world and then turn serious on command.
“I saw Aly start to cry and said, ‘Oh, my gosh, she’s going to make me cry before floor, ‘ ” Biles said.
The American stood head and shoulders above all her rivals on Thursday after she was crowned Olympic all-around champion.
“Before that, she was just a kid who worked out 20 hours a week and played in the gym and hung out with her friends”, Boorman said.
She dominated Thursday’s competition from the start, by scoring 15.866 points on the vault with a so-called amanar – one of the most hard routines. Biles scored a 62.198, Raisman scored 60.098, and Mustafina had 58.665 points in the event. She put up a 15.433 on the balance beam. After the third rotation, she barely trailed Mustafina for second place.
She nailed her signature move, “The Biles”, a double-flip layout with a devilish half twist added in order to cause a blind landing and raise the degree of difficulty to the highest of any routine in the field. Her glitter makeup and the sequined stars and stripes on her red, white and blue leotard sparkled under the bright lights. Like any protective coach, Boorman got a little upset about the thought that all of Biles’s accomplishments would be rendered insignificant if she didn’t win the Olympic all-around.
When the last notes of her music finished, she gave one more big smile and then, looking at Boorman, began to cry.
“Because I knew I had finally done it”, Biles explained. “I felt every emotion at once”.
“I guess it depends on who you ask”, Biles said. She asserted herself as a lock for this Olympic team and defeated reigning Olympic champion Gabby Douglas in the all-around qualification on Sunday by less than half a point to earn one of the two US berths in the final.
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. But experts say that Biles beats Comaneci. To me, I’m still the same Simone. “I just feel like I did my job tonight”.
With more likely to come. Mustafina, who stuck her vault and performed one of her typically flawless bars sets, missed a required element on beam to take a huge hit there before finishing on floor, her weakest event.
Advertisement
Biles, already an Olympic champion after leading the “Final Five” to gold in the team event, was briefly challenged by European champion Mustafina.
