It had just turned 20 minutes past eight when Simone Biles stepped out on to the floor for her final routine. The centre of the arena was quiet and still, every other apparatus vacant. She had the place to herself and the undivided attention of every single person there.
Zinedine Zidane was watching, so was Steph Curry, Tony Hawk and Nadia Comaneci, four of the finest athletes of the past hundred years, all come along to see another of them. Like Comaneci said in a live interview on the big screen at the beginning of the session: “Everyone’s here to see the amazing Simone Biles.” She waited a beat then added: “And 23 other gymnasts.”
With Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps gone, Biles is the last of the great Olympic stars of the 21st century who is still competing in the Games. She is the biggest draw here, the one athlete who can persuade people who do not much like or care for sport to switch on and watch the best to ever do it.
What they got was something even rarer again; a contest between Biles and the second-best gymnast in the world, her heir apparent, Rebeca Andrade from Brazil. For years, everyone else has been competing for second. Biles has not lost an all-around competition since 2013, when she was beaten by her US teammate, Kyla Ross, at the 2013 Chemnitz Friendly. But for the first time in a long time, one of her competitors had a real chance of beating her. Andrade, 25, who won the silver in this event in 2021, and has been closing in on Biles’s scores ever since.
Andrade beat her in the vault at the world championships last year. Biles even passed her a pretend crown when they stood on the podium afterwards. Almost everyone, even Andrade’s own coaches, agree that she has not caught her yet. When they are both at their very best, Biles wins. But she could not afford to make too many mistakes: a slip here or a stumble there and Andrade would be waiting to overtake her.
And it nearly happened. On the uneven bars, which has always been Biles’s weakest apparatus, she flew too high on a transition and had to bend her knees to avoid hitting the mat as she grasped the low bar. She recovered brilliantly and stuck the landing of a spectacular dismount with a double twist, double backflip. But the way she swore as she walked across the floor to her coach told you everything about what had happened. She scored a lowly 13.733, and dropped into third place behind Andrade and Algeria’s Kaylia Nemour.
“At that point,” Biles said afterwards, “I’m not sure what I was doing, but praying to every single god out there.”
From then on, Biles had no margin of error left. “I’ve never been so stressed!” she said, “thank you Rebeca!” She needed to be near perfect. And she was. There was barely so much as a wobble on the balance beam and her score of 14.566 was enough to put her back into the lead before the final rotation.
Andrade scored 14.033 on the floor, which meant Biles needed at least 13.868 to win. It was in doubt for as long as it took to land her first spectacular triple-double tumble and the minute her feet hit the floor you just knew what was going to happen.
Biles won the gold by 1.199 points, At 27, she is the oldest woman to take the all-around title in more 70 years, the third to win two of them and the first to do it in Games that were not back-to-back.
Her US teammate Sunisa Lee claimed the bronze medal, while the British duo of Alice Kinsella and Georgia-Mae Fenton improved on their qualifying positions, finishing in 12th and 18th respectively.
“I’m tired,” Biles said with a big grin. “Rebeca’s way too close. I’ve never had an athlete that close and it definitely put me on my toes. It brought out the best athlete in me, but mmm-hmm, I don’t like it guys, I was stressing out out there.”
It was good to see her laughing about it all as she spoke. It was not so long ago Biles thought she was done with her sport after she came down with that case of the twisties in Tokyo.
“Three years ago, I never thought I would step foot on the gymnastics floor again, just because of everything that had happened,” she said. “Before Tokyo, I was so nervous about getting injured that I neglected my mental health and that meant I ended up getting injured. It was a mental injury and that was almost harder than it being a physical injury, because with a physical injury the doctor can tell you ‘it will be three to six weeks’ or ‘three to six months’ but with a mental injury you can only say ‘time will tell’.”
She has been in therapy since then and was again on the morning of the final, just like she is “every Thursday”.
Biles’s willingness to talk openly about what she has come through to compete here has changed her sport, maybe more than any of the eponymous tricks she has developed and perfected over the years.
Asked if she had a last message, Biles, who was now wearing a diamond necklace in the shape of a goat, said: “Keep your head on straight, have fun, and dream big.” And remember, she added later: “It’s not over till it’s over.”
