Earlier this year, Simone Biles earned the crown of the oldest woman to have won the 8th US National Title. Not long after making the National Championships history, she decided to improve her already outstanding resume a little more. Like thoughts, like action. After a decade, she stepped into Belgium, displayed her maneuvers and clinched her 6th World Title. Besides, she also anchored the team to a gold finish with a 167.729. Leaving the entire stadium in awe, Simone was “really proud of the performances she put out there.” 

Owing to her ‘Twisties’, her gymnastic career took an uncalled-for turn, about to shatter her dreams. But the GOAT justified her well-earned title by standing back up stronger. For the 26-year-old, though she has seen a lot in her illustrious career, some useful take aways matter the most.

Simone Biles laid out her life as an inspiration

Starting from the media to the fans, it’s not unlikely that cameras surround Simone at all times. Amidst lauds and clicks, Heath Thorpe, the Australian artistic gymnast, never fails to catch Simone for a quick questionnaire. According to Gymnastics Now’s post, “Following a very successful return to the world stage, @heaththorpe had a one-on-one chat with the GOAT Simone Biles. She discussed her overall feelings.” After the highly anticipated comeback at the worlds, the 37 Olympic medalist traced back to the difficult times.

This time, she also won a pile of medals.

Last week, 10 years to the day after a braces-bedecked Simone Biles claimed her first world title at Belgium’s Sportpaleis Antwerpen, the grown-up Mrs. Owens returned to that very arena. After scarcely a year back in the gym and in only her third competition since the Tokyo Olympics, Biles unequivocally dominated the 2023 World Championships. She left the arena on Sunday with her 26^th through 30^th world medals around her neck, making her the most decorated gymnast of all time, and obliterating any notion that the undisputed greatest athlete to grace the sport is anywhere near done with it.

Biles’ glut of 2023 hardware began in the team competition, as she led an all-star cast to victory over historic silver and bronze medalists Brazil and France. Biles then won her sixth individual all-around title, after a performance whose only notable flaw was an uncharacteristic stumble during a dance pass on floor exercise. (With Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade and Biles’ teammate Shilese Jones rounding out silver and bronze, we were also blessed with our first-ever all-Black worlds podium.) And the victories didn’t stop there: On the last day of the grueling, weeklong competition, Biles also won both the balance beam and floor exercise event finals.

But it is Biles’ lone glint of silver at this worlds—on the vault, the fast, dangerous event that she often dominates by nearly a point, but also the apparatus that brought on that dangerous bout of vertigo in Tokyo—that may be her most significant medal this year. Mind you, this is not because she “lost.” (As if a silver medal is for slouches! It is not!) It’s because of the statement that silver, and the score that earned it, continues to make about Biles’ priorities as an athlete and a human being.

To see what I mean, we have to rewind a week to the competition’s opening qualification round. There, Biles attempted the stratospherically difficult vault she debuted domestically in 2021: a roundoff (or “Yurchenko-style”) entry onto the apparatus, with a second flip added in “post-flight.” This vault had informally been called the “Yurchenko double pike” (or YDP for short), until the second this happened: