Simone Biles on Sunday dazzled on floor exercise on the way to a record eighth all-around title at the US Gymnastics Championships, another step on a comeback trail pointing toward the Paris Olympics.
The four-time Olympic gold medalist electrified the SAP Center crowd with a soaring floor routine that included a rock-solid landing on her signature Biles I tumbling pass of double layout with a half-twist.
It was her final event of the competition and brought ecstatic fans to their feet, earning a score of 15.400 for a triumphant all-around total of 118.450 points.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Shi Jones, last year’s world championships all-around silver medalist, was second, 3.9 points back with 114.550 and Leanne Wong was third with 111.100.
Biles broke the record for most all-around titles for a man or woman, set by Alfred Jochim with his seventh in 1933 and matched by Biles in 2021.
A DECADE ON
Ten years after winning her first US all-around title, 26-year-old Biles became the oldest woman to seize the national all-around title.
“I’ve been doing it for so long, I feel like I don’t think about numbers,” Biles told NBC. “I think about my performance and I think overall I hit eight for eight. I guess it’s a lucky number this year.”
Biles had taken control on Friday with a dazzling version of her Yurchenko double pike vault that was awarded 9.8 for execution and scored a whopping 15.700.
On Sunday in vault, she opted for a moderately less difficult Cheng vault, scoring 14.850 — still the second-highest scoring vault of the competition.
The US star also achieved her goal of ironing out a few mistakes on balance beam, capturing apparatus gold in vault, beam and floor, and finishing third in the uneven bars.
NO TIME TO WASTE
Biles was the only competitor to finish the two days of competition with two scores of 15 or higher.
Jones produced the only other score of 15 — with a 15.0 on Sunday’s uneven bars.
Biles’s triumph came in just the second competition of her return from a two-year break that followed her dramatic withdrawal from multiple events at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
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