Last weekend was the USA Artistic Gymnastics Championships in San Jose, California. Simone Biles won them with a significant gap, long considered one of the strongest gymnasts ever and recently returned to competition after almost two years of break that began with the sudden withdrawal from the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Biles had returned to competing – and win – a few weeks ago, participating in a qualifying competition in which no one knew what to expect: with the victory at the national championships she confirmed that she is still among the strongest in the world and many are now wondering if and when she will announce her participation at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
With this latest victory, Biles also became the first gymnast – in both the women’s and men’s categories – to win eight gold medals for national competitions on all apparatus (which for women are floor exercise, vault, uneven bars and beam). Before her, the record was held by athlete Alfred Jochim, who won the seventh in 1933. Biles, who is 26, also became the oldest women’s gymnast to win these national championships, in a sport where most some female athletes retire in their twenties.
Sunday Biles finished first by a huge lead, 3,900 points, behind runner-up Shilese Jones. The same had happened at the start of August, her first in almost two years, when she had finished ahead of her by 5 points from the runner-up, Leanne Wong, who finished third this time.
Also this last time Biles repeated the Yurchenko double pike jump on vault (Yurchenko double pike), considered extremely complex and dangerous: Biles herself had been the first to do it in an official competition in 2021. In addition to vaulting, which is the apparatus on which Biles has always been strongest, the public showed great attention to the free body exercise: one of her coaches, Laurent Landi, later called it “the best I’ve ever seen her do”. She also finished first on beam, while the only bronze medal was on the parallel bars, which has always been the apparatus where Biles is weakest.
Biles’ retirement at the 2021 Olympics had attracted great attention around the world. During the first vault test in the team artistic gymnastics competition, Biles was supposed to perform an Amanar – a very complex jump with two and a half twists -, but she was able to complete only one and a half twists, losing balance at the moment of the exit . After the exercise she Biles announced her retirement from competition, and speaking to reporters she said she lost awareness of her body in space while she was in the air (something in artistic gymnastics called twisties), and he explained that after the test he didn’t want to go on anymore. In the following days, she spoke about the difficulty of managing the stress and pressures due to expectations towards him, stimulating a debate on mental health in the world of sport.
After returning to competition in early August, she told the press that she returned to the gym last fall to keep fit, with no prospect of returning to competition. In May she then convinced herself to start over with more intensive training.
Since 2013 Biles has won 25 World Championship medals and 7 Olympic medals. She will likely compete at the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships to be held in Antwerp, Belgium from September 30 to October 8, but she has yet to say whether she will try to qualify for next summer’s Olympics. In this regard, after Sunday’s competition, he told the press: “I think personal goals and these things here are sometimes good to keep to yourself, so that no one can throw them in your face”, and added “I’m of an age where I feel like: oh, leave me alone. So one thing at a time.”