With another world title, Biles is now in a class of her own.
Jane Coaston | VOX
With (another) world-title win to her name Thursday in Stuttgart, Germany, Simone Biles is now the winningest female gymnast at the World Championship level in history. If she wins another medal at the World Championships — individual events will take place this weekend — she will tie the record for the most world-title medals won by anyone, male or female.
It is extremely difficult to quantify “greatness” in a sport where generally, female athletes may only compete for two to five years before retirement.Earns 5th world all-around title ✅— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) October 10, 2019
Breaks own record for women’s record margin of victory ✅
Extends a six-year unbeaten streak ✅
22nd world medal ✅
Her name is @Simone_Biles.pic.twitter.com/mFBFm70bRB
Consider the female gymnast third on the list for most World Championship medals won by a woman, Romanian Gina Gogean, who finished her career with nine medals.
She competed at five world championships between 1993 and 1998, winning a silver medal in the all-around competition — which features all four events in which female athletes compete (bar, beam, floor exercise, and vault) — in 1993.
In contrast, Simone Biles has won the gold medal in the all-around competition at the World Championships every single year in which she’s competed since 2013 (the championships were not held in 2016 due to the Olympics, and Biles took the 2017 season off to recover from the Games). In fact, she has not lost an all-around competition in which she has competed since 2013.
To put it in more familiar terms, Biles has been winning world championships since before the movie Frozen debuted (November 2013). She has been winning World Championships since before Joni Ernst, Ben Sasse, and Thom Tillis were in the Senate. She has the most gold medals at the World Championship level of any gymnast, male or female.
Simone Biles is so good — no, so great — that at this year’s World Championships, she surpassed the margin of victory she achieved in 2018, beating the silver medalist, Tang Xijing, by more than 2.1 points — the largest margin of victory at a world championship competition since the current Code of Points came into use in 2006.
During her floor exercise routine, Biles stepped out of bounds twice (a penalty), but still won the floor competition by more than a point.
She is so good, in fact, that she is now being penalized by the FIG Women’s Technical Committee — the body in charge of deciding what points athletes will receive for performing certain skills — for, in effect, being too good.
For example, Biles’s balance beam dismount — a double twisting double back (two flips, two twists) — is the most difficult beam dismount being competed. It’s so difficult that the same skill is generally only done on floor, where padding and springs can protect athletes who attempt it.
But as the New York Times’s Liriel Higa detailed:
... the international gymnastics federation last week deemed the Biles dismount a mere “H” skill, the same value as on floor. It also valued it at only one tenth higher than the much easier (though still incredibly difficult for the rest of the world) full twisting double back, which is two flips and one twist. That move is classified as a “G” skill on beam, but only an “E” on floor.
To which Biles responded:
The reason? According to the FIG Women’s Technical Committee, that dismount is so difficult that athletes should, in short, be discouraged by the FIG from doing it by lowering its potential scoring value. In its statement, the FIG even compared that dismount to the infamous Thomas Salto, banned from women’s competition after an athlete was paralyzed attempting it in 1980:hahahaHAHAHAHAHhahaHahaAhahAhahahaAhahahHAHAahaaaaaaaHa bullshit https://t.co/NAnzBlfh8c— Simone Biles (@Simone_Biles) October 1, 2019
The direction of the FIG for the past two Olympic cycles has been to encourage the perfect execution and beautiful artistic performance, while continuing the development of the skills.
With this in mind, the WTC has assigned a “reasonable” difficulty value to the dismount, reflecting on these many aspects.
There is added risk in landing of double saltos for Beam dismounts (with/without twists), including a potential landing on the neck.
Reinforcing, there are many examples in the Code where decisions have been made to protect the gymnasts and preserve the direction of the discipline.
The WTC’s task is to ensure the safety of all athletes around the world and decisions are not based purely on one gymnast.
That’s how good Simone Biles is — the international body that determines the scoring for the sport thinks that her moves are so difficult other gymnasts shouldn’t risk trying them.
As Biles told NBC Sports:
“If it were [a gymnast from] another country trying it, it would definitely be a J. But because it’s me. It’s so unfair, because, am I in a league of my own? Yes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t credit me for what I’m doing.”
Biles is so great that she is pushing the entire United States’ team to get better.
After she debuted a triple-double on floor at the 2019 US National Championships — a feat never before landed in competition by a female athlete — her teammate, Jade Carey, posted video of herself attempting the maneuver in her gym just nine days later.
But that was before we knew that Biles was a survivor of sexual abuse — abuse the American gymnastics body knowingly enabled, abuse that Biles has been forthright about discussing, in public. Biles is now the most powerful voice in the sport of gymnastics, and she knows it.
Emotional @Simone_Biles expresses frustration toward USA gymnastics at the 2019 U.S. Championships. pic.twitter.com/eM9ameQw6e— Olympic Channel (@olympicchannel) August 7, 2019
The 2020 Olympics will likely be Biles’s last international competition. At 22, Biles is now six years older than several of her World Championship teammates, the only non-teenager on the squad.
Biles has won more World Championship gold medals in gymnastics than anyone, ever. She has raised the degree of difficulty for the entire sport. And more importantly, she demanded that the sport, and the American governing body that runs it, do better after it failed athletes like her in the most devastating of ways.
It is very difficult to quantify greatness in sports. But it is not difficult to quantify Simone Biles.
She is the greatest female gymnast, ever.
New G.O.A.T.: Simone Biles Makes History Winning 25th World Championship Medal
Karu F. Daniels | THE ROOT
Numbers don’t lie. And neither does the number of medals won.
Simone Biles is living proof of this as the agile athlete makes sports history for winning the most medals of any gymnast. Ever.
On Oct. 13, the Columbus, OH native became the gymnast with the most medals earned at the world championship level with her new victory in the balance beam competition at the World Gymnastics Championship in Stuttgart, Germany.
Biles, 22, continued a record-breaking streak of deft-defying, performance on the balance beam Sunday morning, delivering a score of 15.066.
Shortly after breaking the all time record, she won her 25th medal shortly afterward, scoring a 15.133 on floor.
Previous record holder Vitaly Scherbo, of Belarus, amassed 23 medals during the 1990s.
The now retired gymnast, who was accused of raping a fellow gymnast when she was 15 years old in 2017, earned all of his medals over the course of a six-year period.
Biles has done it in just five, over 20 years later.
Men gymnasts also have the chance to earn medals in six apparatus finals, while women only compete in four.
Of her 25 career world medals, 19 are gold, against 12 of 23 for Scherbo, reported Sports Illustrated.
Biles earned gold on vault on Saturday morning to bring her medal count to 23.
She later competed on uneven bars but placed fifth — which is out of medal contention — but still maintained the highest qualifying scores in both balance beam and floor exercise leading into Sunday.
Biles has been setting records all week in Germany, winning a record 21st medal, leading her team to their fifth consecutive world team championship, on Tuesday.
On Thursday, she captured her fifth all-around world title and scored 58.999 points, beating China’s Tang Xijing by a whopping 2.1 points — her largest-ever margin of victory at the world championships.
On Saturday, Fox News called her “the reigning world champion on the floor exercise and the reigning world bronze medalist on the balance beam.”
“Every year it feels better and better just because we’re adding to the legacy,” Biles said. “I feel like I never think of records. I just go out there and do what I came to do, which is compete for the country.”
Breaking a decades-long record by a Rusky, she’s helping make America Great Again.
Bless up Miss Biles.
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