PARIS — Simone Biles remains peerless. Even when she’s not quite perfect.
The American gymnastics star edged Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade during a tense Olympic all-around final Thursday. Biles’ total of 59.131 was just over a point ahead of Andrade at 57.932, one of the closest calls Biles has ever endured at a major international event.
Sunisa Lee, the Tokyo Olympics champion, earned bronze despite spending much of the last 15 months dealing with multiple kidney diseases that left her return to the Games very much in doubt.
Still, the meet ended just like all the ones Biles has started and finished over the last 11 years: with hugs and gold on the way.
And a silver goat chain — along with a gold medal — around the Greatest of All Time’s neck.
“It is crazy that I am in the conversation of ‘greatest of all athletes’ because I just still think, ‘I’m Simone Biles from Spring, Texas who loves to flip,'” she said.
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The margin was the smallest in a major international event since Biles captured the third of her record six world championships in 2015.
She was a teenager then. She’s an icon now.
The 27-year-old who is redefining what a gymnast can do — and just as notably, for how long she can do it — became the third woman to become a two-time Olympic champion, joining Larisa Latynina of the Soviet Union in 1956 and 1960 and Vera Caslavska of Czechoslovakia in 1964 and 1968.
Biles also is the oldest woman to claim the biggest title in her sport since then 30-year-old Maria Gorokhovskaya of the Soviet Union won the first-ever Olympic all-around in Melbourne in 1952.
Yet the sixth gold and ninth overall medal — the same as Romanian great Nadia Comaneci, who was among the star-studded crowd that included the U.S. men’s basketball team — of Biles’ unparalleled career did not come as easy as so many that came before.
She misjudged a transition on uneven bars, the weakest of her four events, letting go of the upper bar too soon and forcing her to reach for a larger-than-expect gap.
While she didn’t fall — Biles muscled her way back into the routine — it blunted her momentum and led to major deductions that left her trailing Andrade through two rotations.
Biles responded with a largely wobble-free 14.566 on the balance beam, the highest of the night among the 24 finalists, while Andrade was forced to do a major balance check during her slightly easier set that dropped her down to second heading into floor exercise, Biles’ signature event.
Andrade, the silver medalist behind Lee in 2021, needed the best floor set of her life to catch Biles. It didn’t quite happen. Andrade stepped out of bounds at one point, a minor problem but enough to create plenty of wiggle room for Biles.
“I don’t want to compete with Rebeca no more,” Biles said. “I’m tired. Like, she’s way too close. I’ve never had an athlete that close.”
Biles incorporated music from pop icons Taylor Swift and Beyonce into her current routine, a 75-second set that began with the opening bars of Swift’s hit “Ready For It?” and featured the hardest tumbling done by a woman in the history of the sport.
