Biles still in class by herself
BOSTON — Simone Biles didn’t come back after a twoyear break from gymnastics to just win. That’s not really what it’s about for the Olympic champion. She has won enough — more than enough really — in her career. And she has the medals to prove it.
The second act of her remarkable career is about something more. At 21, she has a greater appreciation of her own natural abilities than she did when she won four golds at the 2016 Olympics. She wants to find out where all that talent and all that power can take her and her sport.
“I have nothing to prove,” Biles said. “I can quit if I wanted to.”
No chance. She’s simply too curious to see where this thing goes.
Biles dominated the opening night Friday of the U.S. Championships, posting the highest scores on all four events on her way to an allaround total of 60.100. It’s the first time since the allaround final in Rio de Janeiro two years ago that anyone’s topped 60 points.
No one has really come close in the interim. Then again, no one is Biles. Reigning world champion Morgan Hurd put together the best night of her career as a senior and her score of 57.000 but will head into the finals Sunday a distant second behind Biles. Hurd, 17, is well aware who she’s up against.
“It’s such an honor to be able to compete with the G.O.A.T,” Hurd said, using the popular acronym for Greatest Of All Time to describe Biles. “She’s just such a legend and it’s amazing. Clearly I’m watching her because you can’t not watch her. Your eyes are just automatically drawn to her.”
In that sense, nothing has changed for Biles. She returned to competition after a her post-Olympic sabbatical at the U.S. Classic two weeks ago and won easily even with a handful of small errors she promised could clean up in time for nationals.
Though Biles wasn’t quite perfect — she stepped out of bounds twice in her floor routine — she left little doubt she remains in a class by herself. And it’s not close. The chasm between Biles and the rest of the world appears to be widening two years before the Tokyo Olympics. She tries to shut out the noise, instead focusing on the next challenge and not the prospect of living up to her own rapidly growing legend.
“It doesn’t matter the gap between her and everyone else,” co-coach Laurent Landi said. “She doesn’t compete against everybody. She competesagainst herself.”
And even on a night when she reached heights not seen since her star-making turn in Brazil, Biles and Landi believe she’s still not 100 percent. It will take time to get her to successfully harness her adrenaline on floor exercise. She stepped out of bounds in her first tumbling pass in Columbus, Ohio. This time, she was so relieved to keep her first pass in bounds that she promptly found herself stepping outside the white lines on both her second and third runs.
“Every single meet she does she learns about herself again and it takes time,” Landi said. “It took her so many years to get really comfortable with what she was doing and the reward was all the gold medals.”
She’s even working in an upgrade or two. Biles did just one vault at the US Classics but added an Amanar for nationals. She drilled it with ease, seemingly falling out of the sky while finishing her 2½ twists.