Biles ties mark with 23rd career medal
With a “calm, peaceful landing” and a big smile, Simone Biles on Saturday claimed her record-tying 23rd career world championship medal and will have two opportunities to break the record during Sunday’s final day of competition in Stuttgart, Germany.
The four-time Olympic gold medalist won her third gold medal at this year’s International Gymnastics Federation event, taking gold in women’s vault alongside earlier victories in the team and all-around competition.
She now has 17 world gold medals with three silvers and three bronzes and stands alongside Vitaly Scherbo of the Soviet Union and Belarus as the most-decorated athlete to compete at the world championships.
Biles, 22, of Spring was one of three U.S. gymnasts to medal on the first day of event finals in Stuttgart. She won the vault with an average score of 15.399, followed by teammate Jade Carey of Phoenix at 14.883. Sunisa Lee of St. Paul, Minn., was third on uneven bars, an event in which Biles placed fifth.
Biles was relatively stoic after her first vault, which features a front somersault with 1½ twists and is named for Chinese gymnast Cheng Fei. She landed slightly off line but avoided an out-ofbounds penalty and scored 15.333 points to 15.166 for Carey on the same vault.
On her second vault, which features 2½ twists and is named for Romanian champion Simona Amanar, Biles broke into a smile at almost the same time she hit the mat on the center stripe with the tiniest of hops. That performance scored 15.486, with a 9.666 execution score, to claim the championship.
“I was happy to land it very well because in practice I’m always flying out of it, and I was thinking there’s no way I’m going to land this fine because I’m always overshooting it,” Biles said. “So I was really proud to have a calm, peaceful landing.”
Biles last year won a silver medal on uneven bars, the only event in which she did not medal at the 2016 Olympics, but Saturday finished fifth with the same 14.7 score she attained a year ago. Nina Dewael of Belgium won with a score of 15.233, followed by Rebecca Downie of Great Britain at 15.0 and Lee at 14.8.
“Even when I go into an event final, I can kind of tell you that I’m not going to medal (on bars),” Biles said. “But I feel confident going into it, and I never thought in a million years I would feel this confident on bars. So I’m pretty proud of that achievement.”
Sunday, Biles will close out the final major international event before the 2020 Olympics with event finals in balance beam and floor exercise. She was the top scorer on both events in the all-around and is an odds-on favorite to win both event finals.
As she prepares to wrap up her fifth world championships, Biles said she has come to believe that she belongs on the same floor with the world’s top gymnasts.
“Growing up, I wanted to do gymnastics for fun, and look where it has led me,” she told the Olympic Channel. “We’ll see where the rest of my career takes me.”