Just a year into return, Biles better than ever
DOHA, Qatar – When Simone Biles returned to the gym, almost exactly one year ago, there were fears to go along with her hopes.
She’d taken a year off after winning five medals in the Rio Olympics, four of them gold. She had a new coach, Laurent Landi, because longtime coach Aimee Boorman had moved to Florida. She didn’t want to get injured.
“And then just the fear of getting back to the level I was at,” Biles told USA TODAY last Nov. 1, the day before she returned to gymnastics.
LOL.
Sorry. But that’s a good one. Not only is Biles back to the level she was at in 2016, she’s surpassed it. In less than a year.
Unless the athletes’ shuttle gets lost
on the way to the Aspire Dome, or she gets bored halfway through Thursday’s meet and decides to go for pizza, Biles will become the first woman to win four all-around titles at the world gymnastics championships. Only Japan’s Kohei Uchimura, he of the six men’s titles, will have more.
Biles’ performance Saturday in qualifying was perhaps the best meet she’s ever had and, yes, that includes Rio. She debuted a vault so hard some of the top men can’t even do it — a roundoff with a half-twist onto the vaulting table and then a front double full somersault off — and it will now be named for her.
She posted the highest scores of the field on vault, floor exercise and balance beam, with her vault and floor scores more than a point better than that of the next gymnast. Biles’ score on uneven bars, her “worst” event, was second only to Belgium’s Nina Derwael, the reigning world bronze medalist and two-time European champion in the event.
Her score of 60.965 was 41⁄ points better than that of teammate Morgan Hurd, who just happens to be the reigning world champion.
Oh, and she did all this despite being in the emergency room until 1 a.m. the previous night with a kidney stone so large she’s dubbed it “The Pearl.”
“Capable maybe,” Biles said when asked to describe her performance, giving herself only a “six or a seven.” OK, sure.
“I would say eight and a half,” Landi said. “It was pretty good.”
Have we mentioned that Biles hasn’t even been in the gym a year yet?
When Alicia Sacramone, Aly Raisman and Gabby Douglas came back, they spent much of the first year con- ditioning and working themselves back into shape. Not until their second year back did they start to resemble their old selves, let alone make upgrades.
And when I say upgrades, I mean small tweaks. Not skills that have never been done before and a dramatic transformation on an event, like Biles has done.
“Confidence-wise and consistency, I think we still have a ways to go to get back up to where I was in Rio,” Biles said after the national championships. “But gymnastics-wise, yes.”
And the scariest thing is she can still get better.
By winning the team title — their fourth in a row, for those keeping score — the U.S. women qualified for the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. That means rather than focusing on locking up a spot at next year’s worlds, the Americans can spend the next 12 months testing out new skills and polishing their execution.
If Biles managed to upgrade her vault and floor and improve her uneven bars in less than a year, just imagine what she’ll do before Tokyo.
“It’s definitely a relief to have (qualifying) out of the way,” Biles said. “We can focus on the years to come, upgrades, and not worry about having to lock a spot in.”
The world can consider itself warned. Not that it wasn’t already aware.
Biles has won every meet she’s entered since the U.S. championships in
2013. Most of the time, it hasn’t even been close.
She’s the greatest gymnast of her or any other generation, and all she’s doing is adding to the legend.
“She’s a phenomenon who is born once in 100 years,” said Uzbekistan’s Oksana Chusovitina, a marvel herself at
43.
Taking a year off and needing less than a year to be even better. That’s unbelievable.
That’s Simone Biles.