PARIS (AP) — 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 Thursday.
After a sloppy uneven bars that included a mistake 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 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.
Biles checked with Owens, who reassured 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,” Biles said.
Maybe because she hadn’t been pushed — not in a long time anyway — the way 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, Biles found herself accepting a gold medal from IOC president Thomas Bach for a second time, this time with Lee standing next to her with a bronze.
Eight years ago in Rio de Janeiro, Biles was a teenage prodigy. Now, she’s an icon. One who remains peerless even when she’s not perfect.
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 then 30-year-old Maria Gorokhovskaya of the Soviet Union won the first-ever Olympic all-around in Melbourne in 1952.
The sport then is not what it is now. The days of “little girls in pretty boxes” are long gone. 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 Thursday.
When Biles tried to downplay her impact, Lee corrected her.
“Honestly Simone, I think a lot of it has to do with you,” 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 — Biles muscled her way back into the routine — it blunted her momentum and led to major deductions that left her behind Andrade through two rotations.
The deficit didn’t last.
Biles responded with a largely wobble-free 14.566 on the balance beam, the highest of the night among the 24 finalists, while Andrade was forced to do a major balance check during her slightly easier set that dropped her down to second heading into floor exercise, Biles’ signature event.
Andrade, the silver medalist behind Lee in 2021, needed the best floor set of her life to catch Biles. It didn’t quite happen. Andrade stepped out of bounds at one point, a minor problem but enough to create plenty of wiggle room for Biles.
“I don’t want to compete with Rebeca no more,” Biles said. “I’m tired. Like, she’s way too close. I’ve never had an athlete that close.”
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 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 — Biles sprinted to hug Lee just off the podium and blew kisses to the cameras that have become fixtures wherever she goes under the Olympic rings.