Simone Biles turned the concluding rotation of the women’s all-around final into a coronation as she emphatically underscored her status as the greatest gymnast of all time at the Bercy Arena in Paris.
Just as she had in the women’s team final two days ago, Biles closed the show with a soaring floor routine that confirmed her second gold medal of the Games by more than a point over her nearest rival, Rebeca Andrade of Brazil.
Despite superb preceding displays from Andrade and Biles’ team-mate, the defending all-around champion Sunisa Lee, by the time the all-conquering 27-year-old stepped onto a mat the outcome was a mere formality.
Biles’ score of 15.066 gave her a total of 59.131 that beat Andrade by 1.119 with Lee a further one and a half points behind in bronze. It gave Biles back the all-around title she first won in Rio in 2016.
Biles celebrated by embracing Lee, with whom she paraded with the USA flag, before dangling a silver goat necklace around her neck, a nod to her almost unanimously acknowledged status as the best her sport has seen and the ‘greatest of all time’.
But it was not quite so simple as it seemed for Biles, who found herself in third place at the halfway stage behind Andrade and the Algerian Kaylia Neymour after a minor error on the uneven bars.
Compared to her battle to overcome an attack of the ‘twisties’ in Tokyo, Biles’ subsequent rise to claim her sixth Olympic gold will barely register on the adversity scale.
But just as in Tokyo three years ago, when she bravely returned from her mental block to win a silver medal on the beam, it was her performance on the same piece of apparatus that paved her way back to the top of the podium.
Even the best gymnast in the world can get things wrong occasionally, and after starting her final with a strong vault, Biles faltered on the bars, the only apparatus in which she has failed to reach the individual final later in the Games.
There was an audible gasp from another celebrity-sprinkled audience – Kendall Jenner and NBA basketball star Steph Curry were in attendance – as she almost slipped in transition to the lower bar and missed a connection, scoring 13.733.
That was enough to shunt Andrade, the 2020 vault champion, into first place with Neymour, the brilliant Algerian bars specialist, moving up to second on the back of a high-octane 15.533.
Any error on beam could have proved decisive for Biles, but she delivered when it mattered, out-scoring her rivals with a score of 14.566 to resume first place by 0.166 over Andrade going into the final rotation.
That the lead was so slender hardly mattered. No-one comes close to matching Biles on floor these days, and as with the women’s team final two days ago, the final apparatus served as a victory lap, concluded with a standing ovation.
British duo Alice Kinsella and Georgia-Mae Fenton improved on their qualifying positions, finishing in 12th and 18th places respectively.
