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The legend of Simone Biles gets even better
The heartbreak of Tokyo has been superseded by Biles' success in Belgium in the same arena where she won her first world all-around a decade earlier
As Simone Biles competed a few days ago in the world championships' floor exercise — the square space where she flips, flies and reaches heights that seem impossible for someone so small in physical stature — she tripped.
During what was supposed to be a relatively simple leaping sequence, her right foot caught on the surface, and she lunged forward. As Biles steadied herself, she smirked and then smiled, as taken aback as anyone in the crowd that she'd stumbled.
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She, of course, recovered quickly, flawlessly executing her final tumbling pass of the routine, posting an impressive score and wrapping up her sixth individual all-around gold medal at worlds , more than any other woman in the sport.
It was something of a metaphor for what Biles has experienced the past couple of years since last we saw her on the world stage at the Tokyo Olympics. There, she struggled, dealing with what she said felt like "the weight of the world on my shoulders," with the expectation that the American team would win another gold medal, plus the onset of what gymnasts call the twisties, a potentially dangerous feeling that they're lost in midair. She withdrew from the team and all-around events, though she won bronze on the balance beam. And despite all of her past success, she still faced some criticism from pundits on social media.
That was an unexpected stumble.
In the months that followed, Biles did the work to steady herself. She committed to therapy for her mental health , realizing that she is phenomenal at gymnastics but that it's OK to get outside the gym and enjoy life. She married Green Bay Packers defensive back Jonathan Owens , who was playing for Biles' hometown Houston Texans when the two began dating.
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Now she seems as happy as we have ever seen her, and it was all over her face in Antwerp during the world championships. It was there during team championships, during the individual all-around, during event finals — and as she danced and laughed with Brazil's Rebeca Andrade, the all-around silver medalist, once their meet was finally done and they were outside the gym.
Simone Biles shows off her gold medal on the beam during the apparatus finals at the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships on Sunday in Antwerp, Belgium. (AP Photo/Geert vanden Wijngaert)
After two years away from international competition and just a few months after returning to serious training, Biles was still stunting on her competitors. On the first night of the meet, she had another move named after her, meaning she was the first person to complete it in an international competition, when she completed a Yurchenko double pike vault, a move so difficult that few men do it.
It's now the fifth Biles move overall and, technically, the Biles II for vault.
She led the U.S. women to their record seventh straight world team title, won that sixth all-around gold and, in the event finals, claimed three more medals: gold on floor, gold on beam and silver on vault. It all means that she now has an incredible 37 Olympics and world championship medals — more than any man or woman in history.
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The heartbreak of Tokyo has been superseded by her success in Belgium in the same arena where she won her first world all-around a decade earlier.
As beautiful and gravity-defying as her performances were (seriously, her beam routine in Sunday's event final is stunning), the five medals are secondary to seeing Biles so joyous. She's no longer struggling under the weight of the varying degrees of abuse she says she suffered from Larry Nassar and Bela and Marta Karolyi or the weight of a perfectionist mentality and the expectation, whether explicit or implicit, that she be the savior as her sport's national governing body was crumbling around her.
She has become an inspiration not just for a new generation of gymnasts — particularly Black ones, who once struggled for acceptance in the sport but now see many who look like them on the sport's biggest stages — but also for those dealing with their own mental health ups and downs. Her huge facility just outside Houston, World Champions Centre, has become the new model for what gymnastics should be, focused on fun and transparency first and foremost while still developing world-class gymnasts. Owens, who went undrafted out of Division II Missouri Western and knows more than most the commitment it takes to be an elite athlete, has become her biggest cheerleader.
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Biles told Olympics.com before departing for worlds that she didn't know what brought her fully back to the sport and indicated that these past few weeks of competitions, including worlds, weren't really planned — a rarity for a woman who said she usually plans everything. But she also didn't want to get a decade down the road and have regrets, so here we are.
On Sunday, as she posed for cameras with her fifth and final medal of the meet held between her iridescent pink fingernails, the stadium announcer summed up the Biles we see now perfectly:
"She was already the GOAT. Now she's even ... GOATer."
