ANTWERP, Belgium — Simone Biles advanced to every individual final at the world gymnastics championships, and she earned the top qualifying score in the all-around, as well as on three of the four apparatuses
In 2019, the most recent time Biles competed at the world championships, she won five golds and placed fifth on bars. The 2018 world championships were the only time she earned six medals — golds in the team, all-around, vault and floor finals, then silver on bars and bronze on beam.
Shilese Jones will join Biles in the all-around final, and both Americans could finish on the podium. Biles topped the field in the qualifying round with a huge score of 58.865. Jones, the all-around silver medalist in 2022, advanced in second place, nearly two points behind Biles with a 56.932. While Biles has room to make mistakes, Britain’s Jessica Gadirova and Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade could threaten Jones in the final. Andrade, the reigning all-around champion, scored a 56.599 in the qualifying round, and Gadirova, the bronze medalist last year, finished just ahead with a 56.766.
Scores from qualifying do not carry over to the finals, so medals are determined solely by each gymnast’s upcoming performances. No more than two athletes per country can advance to each final, and the U.S. team qualified the maximum gymnasts for each medal event.
Here’s how the U.S. women stack up against the other athletes in the apparatus finals:
Biles performs the hardest vault in women’s gymnastics — the Yurchenko double pike, now known as the Biles II after she successfully debuted the element at an international competition Sunday. That gives her a significant edge, even though she will lose a half-point if her coach stands on the mat as a spotter as he has every other time she has attempted this vault this season.
In the final, each gymnast will perform two different vaults, and those scores will be averaged to determine the results.
As long as Biles stays on her feet on both her vaults, she probably will win the gold. Her two-vault average (14.949) was three-tenths of a point higher than that of Andrade, whose execution in the qualifying round was so superb it would be difficult to improve much. Biles’s vaults have difficulty scores of 6.4 and 5.6; the Brazilian star performs the same vault as Biles’s lower-difficulty one, but her other vault is worth just 5.0.
Joscelyn Roberson, a 17-year-old American, advanced to the vault final at her first world championships. She has the same vaults as Andrade, but her execution isn’t as strong. With those minor form issues, she probably would need others to make mistakes to win a medal. Roberson had the sixth-best average in the qualifying round, and reaching the final is an accomplishment for her.
