Simone Biles huddled with Sunisa Lee. She looked to her husband Jonathan Owens in the stands. Lost in the moment. And maybe a touch frantic.
The American gymnastics star knew she was trailing Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade and Algeria’s Kaylia Nemour through two rotations during the Olympic all-around final Aug. 1.
After a sloppy uneven bars that included a mistake Ms. Biles can never remember making in competition, she sat in a chair, closed her eyes, ignored the sea of cameras around her, and attempted to refocus.
She and Ms. Lee tried to do the math. How bad was it? They weren’t sure. It had been a long time since it was this tight.
Ms. Biles checked with Mr. Owens, who reassured Ms. Biles that she was fine, even though she was in third. His wife of 15 months might not have believed him in the moment.
“I’ve just never been so stressed before,” Ms. Biles said.
Maybe because she hadn’t been pushed – not in a long time anyway – the way Ms. Andrade pushed inside an electric Bercy Arena.
Yet the jitters eventually faded. The 27-year-old who is redefining what a gymnast can do and how long she can do it went to work.
One stoic beam routine and one floor exercise that is unlike anything ever done in her sport later, Ms. Biles found herself accepting a gold medal from IOC president Thomas Bach for a second time, this time with Ms. Lee standing next to her with a bronze.
Eight years ago in Rio de Janeiro, Ms. Biles was a teenage prodigy. Now, she’s an icon. One who remains peerless even when she’s not perfect.
Ms. Biles now has nine Olympic medals, six of them gold. And while she says she doesn’t keep track of these things, she sort of does. The GOAT necklace she rocked in the aftermath isn’t a coincidence, even if she maintains she’s just “Simone Biles from Spring, Texas, that loves to flip.”
Maybe, but she’s also the third woman to become a two-time Olympic champion, joining Larisa Latynina of the Soviet Union in 1956 and 1960 and Vera Caslavska of Czechoslovakia in 1964 and 1968. Oh, and the oldest to finish atop the all-around podium since Maria Gorokhovskaya of the Soviet Union won the first-ever Olympic all-around in Helsinki in 1952.
The sport then is not what it is now. The days of “little girls in pretty boxes” are long gone. Ms. Biles has fueled that transformation one performance at a time. There’s a reason stars like the U.S. men’s basketball team and Kendall Jenner flock to watch her Aug. 1.
When Ms. Biles tried to downplay her impact, Ms. Lee corrected her.
“Honestly Simone, I think a lot of it has to do with you,” Ms. Lee said.
Even if her 39th world or Olympic medal didn’t come as easily as most of the 38 before it.
She misjudged a transition on uneven bars, the weakest of her four events, letting go of the upper bar too soon and forcing her to reach for a larger-than-expect gap.
While she didn’t fall – Ms. Biles muscled her way back into the routine – it blunted her momentum and led to major deductions that left her behind Ms. Andrade through two rotations.
The deficit didn’t last.
Ms. Biles responded with a largely wobble-free 14.566 on the balance beam, the highest of the night among the 24 finalists, while Ms. Andrade was forced to do a major balance check during her slightly easier set that dropped her down to second heading into floor exercise, Ms. Biles’ signature event.
Ms. Andrade, the silver medalist behind Ms. Lee in 2021, needed the best floor set of her life to catch Ms. Biles. It didn’t quite happen. Ms. Andrade stepped out of bounds at one point, a minor problem but enough to create plenty of wiggle room for Ms. Biles.
“I don’t want to compete with Rebeca no more,” Ms. Biles said. “I’m tired. Like, she’s way too close. I’ve never had an athlete that close.”
Ms. Biles incorporated music from pop icons Taylor Swift and Beyonce into her current routine, a 75-second set that began with the opening bars of Ms. Swift’s hit “Ready For It?” and featured the hardest tumbling done by a woman in the history of the sport.
When she was done – sealing gold that served as a redemption of sorts three years after pulling out of multiple finals in Tokyo to focus on her mental health – Ms. Biles sprinted to hug Ms. Lee just off the podium and blew kisses to the cameras that have become fixtures wherever she goes under the Olympic rings.
After the final score was announced, Ms. Biles and Ms. Lee – both Olympic champions – bolted onto the floor, waving an American flag.
Ms. Lee, the Tokyo winner with Ms. Biles sidelined, is the first to win gold in all-around one Games then earn another medal in the next since Nadia Comăneci in 1976 and ‘80. She did it despite spending much of the last 15 months dealing with multiple kidney diseases that left her return to the Games very much in doubt.
“I just wanted to prove to myself that I could do it because I didn’t think that I could,” Ms. Lee said.
While there may be more medals on the way – Ms. Biles is in three event finals later in the Games – the all-around puts her into the conversation as perhaps the greatest American Olympian ever.
Yet she’s also far more than that.
She’s a vocal advocate for survivors of sexual abuse and the importance of proper mental health. She met virtually with her therapist before the Americans won gold in the team final on July 30. They kept their regular Aug. 1 appointment too.
Ms. Biles relied on the internal work she’s done over the years after that rocky bars routine. She sat with her legs crossed on a chair in her blue sequined leotard and joked she was “praying to every single God out there.”
In reality, she was trying to re-center herself. And then she moved on. It’s what she does.
Ms. Biles has said repeatedly over the last three years that what happened in Tokyo is a part of her past, not her present, and if critics have a problem with it, that’s their issue, not hers.
She’s moved on to bigger things. Like setting a standard that may never be reached. In her gymnastics for sure, and maybe others too. When trying to count the number of active Olympians who have stood atop their sport for 11 years and counting, no math is required.
There is only one.
This story was reported by The Associated Press. Material from Reuters was used in this report.