Paris: American gymnastics superstar Simone Biles claimed her second Olympic all-around title at the Paris Olympics. The medal is Biles’ ninth at the Games, bringing her career total to six gold, one silver and two bronze.
Biles accumulated 59.131 total to finish on top, as Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade took silver, scoring 57.932. American Suni Lee bagged bronze (56.465).
Before Biles no woman had ever won two non-consecutive Olympic all-around titles. Two women (Larisa Latynina 1956-60 and Vera Caslavska (1964-68) and four men (Alberto Braglia 1908-12; Viktor Chukarin 1952-56; Kato Sawao 1968-72; and Uchimura Kohei 2012-2016) own two Olympic all-around gold medals, according to Olympics stats.
At 27, Biles is the oldest woman to take the all-around crown in 72 years since Maria Gorokhovskaya, then 30, won gold in event’s inaugural staging at Helsinki 1952.
Though Biles cannot catch Latynina’s overall record haul of 18, she could tie her gold medal total of nine if she runs the table with wins in Saturday’s vault final and Monday’s beam and floor finals.
Biles has not lost an all-around competition since a friendly competition in early 2013 in Germany.
At the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, Biles was forced out of the women’s team final and four subsequent finals as she prioritised her mental health, dealing with a case of what gymnasts call the ‘twisties,’ where the body and mind fall out of sync.
Earlier, Biles led USA to a gold medal win in the women’s artistic gymnastics team event at the Paris Olympics.
It was the fourth win for America in the team event, having taken the titles at Atlanta 1996, London 2012 and Rio 2016.
–IANS
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