Simone Biles competes in the floor exercise during the women’s gymnastics team final at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Photo: Lukas Schulze/DPA/Zuma Press
The women’s gymnastics all-around individual final is usually one of the most gripping events of the Summer Olympics. But here’s a sampling of things that may be more suspenseful than Thursday’s competition: stamp-collecting, data entry, C-Span and soup.
The rest of the world has all but conceded the gold medal to Simone Biles—especially the people
who should be attempting to beat her. Biles has turned the world’s best women’s gymnasts into the Angola basketball squad before their matchup with the 1992 Dream Team.
Take the case of Aly Raisman. The two-time captain of Team USA admits that a silver medal in any competition featuring Biles is basically gold. After she finished second in last week’s qualifying, Raisman said she was thrilled to have made the final, in part because anything can happen in gymnastics. Some day, one gymnast could be on top, the next it could be another. Then she quickly corrected herself.
“Not counting Simone,” Raisman said. “Simone is always the best.”
Raisman doesn’t even bother to pretend that she’s trying to dethrone Biles. She merely wants to end up standing near her on the medal stand. “I hope she wins,” she said. “Because she wins every single competition.”
That’s no exaggeration. The heaviest favorite in the entire Olympics is a bubbly 4-foot-8 teenager who loves the Kardashians and Snapchat, hates thunderstorms and bugs, and collects turtle figurines when she travels. At age 19, Biles is the three-time reigning world champion and four-event anchor of Tuesday’s gold-medal winning U.S. women’s gymnastics team—and she could win as many as four individual gold medals in the next week.
Simone Biles competes in the vault event during the women's team final. Photo: emmanuel dunand/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images But it’s how Biles wins, not many how medals she might win, that makes even gymnastics snobs gush.
Since the 1972 Olympics—a period that encompasses all-time greats Olga Korbut, Nadia Comăneci, Mary Lou Retton—no one has won the women’s all-around by more than 0.3 points. The average margin of victory in that time is 0.208 points. Biles won Sunday’s qualifying by 1.759 points.
The gap between her and anyone else is statistically silly. It would be like a swimmer winning the 200-meter butterfly by 2.73 seconds. Michael Phelps won that same race this week by 0.04 seconds.
In short, Biles comes as close to perfection as anyone that women’s gymnastics has ever seen—and that includes the women’s gymnasts who have scored perfect 10s.
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