After the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, Simone Biles’s future in gymnastics was in limbo. The lingering question was not whether she would return to greatness but if she would even want to try. Biles took a year away from the sport and then, with little self-generated fanfare, launched a comeback. That led to this past week’s triumphs, a brilliant showing at the world championships that left no doubt: Simone Biles is back.
Biles thrived under pressure and capped her run Sunday with two more gold medals. In the last women’s events — the beam and floor finals — Biles showcased the same superb routines that she had all week and has for years. She will leave here with five medals, including four golds, and with the newly minted status as the most decorated gymnast in history.
But for Biles, this competition was more about what she proved to herself — and to others. She showed she could handle the stress of a major event and that the trouble she had with a mental block at the Tokyo Olympics wouldn’t repeat itself. She showed she’s as capable of being her best version as her past self.
“I wasn’t too worried about medal count or medal color this meet,” Biles said Sunday, adding that she had talked about goals with teammate Joscelyn Roberson and her objective was simple. “As long as I get out there, do those routines again, it’s a win in my book. It doesn’t matter if I end up on the podium or not. That’s not something I care about.”
Yet as she performed her difficult routines without mistakes, Biles returned to the podium again and again.
She finished the meet with a floor routine packed with powerful tumbling. She stepped out of bounds on one pass, but her high difficulty score provided the cushion she needed for gold. Rebeca Andrade, Biles’s top challenger, had stronger execution but couldn’t pass Biles, who scored a 14.633. Andrade (14.500) shared the podium with fellow Brazilian Flavia Saraiva (13.966), a 24-year-old who had never won an individual medal at the world championships.
Andrade continues to compete closely with Biles for gold on several apparatuses, which has required the American to be at her best to land atop the podium. In this final, if Biles had stepped out of bounds with both feet instead of one, she would have finished second.
Before this trip to Belgium, Biles had performed in just two official competitions — the U.S. Classic, where she made her season debut, and then the two-day national championships — since the Tokyo Games. This time, faced with a week-long global event, Biles excelled again. She performed 16 times — four routines on each apparatus — and made just one major mistake. That came on vault with her very difficult Yurchenko double pike; she rolled backward with too much power, a fall that led to her only silver.
“I’m not mad about it at all,” Biles said, adding that it’s better to have too much power than not enough.
The beam final featured four past world or Olympic champions: Biles (2014, 2015 and 2019), Japan’s Urara Ashikawa (2021), Germany’s Pauline Schaefer-Betz (2017) and the Netherlands’ Sanne Wevers (2016). A pair of newcomers from China, Zhou Yaqin and Zhang Qingying, can be excellent, and Zhou earned a difficulty score in the final that matched Biles’s mark.
So Biles needed a strong routine to contend for this gold, and she delivered. Every element was secure. Biles’s best beam routine of the world championships finished with a full-twisting double tuck dismount that had only a small hop. With a 14.800, she edged Zhou by one-tenth, meaning even a tiny mistake would have changed the outcome. While Biles had no lapses in balance, Zhou bent slightly at the hips after completing a full-twisting jump, and that error probably cost her the top spot on the podium.
Andrade claimed bronze with a 14.300. American Shilese Jones would have been in medal contention with her best routine, but she fell on her dismount and landed in seventh. Jones had another opportunity to medal on floor and turned in a strong routine, but she finished in fifth.
Khoi Young’s impressive debut at the world championships ended with another silver medal, this time on vault. He stuck both vaults as the first competitor, and his 14.849 was topped only by Britain’s Jake Jarman (15.050). Young, a 20-year-old from Bowie, Md., already had a silver medal on pommel horse and a bronze in the team competition.
It was a breakthrough world championships for the American men, who claimed four medals. The U.S. team previously had won at least four medals at the world championships just once (2013) over the past four decades.
