How Simone Biles rallied to reclaim gold in women’s all-around gymnastics at Paris Olympics: ‘I was stressing’

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PARIS — There were any number of things Simone Biles needed to concentrate on in the middle of the women’s all-around competition here Thursday. Doing math in her head wasn’t something she planned on.

For more than a decade, she’s dominated gymnastics. Olympic medals. World Championships. Moves named after her because no one else had ever executed them before.

Yeah, Tokyo had been a mess. But when she was mentally capable of actually competing, she always won — unbeaten in all-around competitions since 2011.

And she won mostly the same way, by taking an early lead and never looking back.

Now, suddenly, she wasn’t in the lead.

A brutal uneven bar had sent her to third place halfway into the competition. It also sent her mind racing to unfamiliar places. Wait, could I actually lose? Do I have a chance?

She looked over at her fellow American, Sunisa Lee, who was in a similar spot — fifth place, and also wondering if a medal was even possible. What were the calculations? What did they need to score?

“I don’t even know how to do math in my head,” Lee said.

“Me neither,” Biles seconded.

Biles quickly found her husband, Jonathan Owens, in the stands. Owens is a safety for the Chicago Bears. He got special permission to miss a couple days of training camp because, well, he’s married to Simone Biles and this was the Olympics all-around. Even the NFL understands that.

“What place am I in,” she asked Owens. “And how far am I behind?”

“He was like, ‘You’re fine, you’re in third,’” Biles said. “I just had never been so stressed before. Thank you Rebeca.”

Rebeca is Rebeca Andrade, a 25-year-old Brazilian who, due to the degrees of difficulty needed, entered this competition as seemingly the only possible threat to defeat Biles.

The two have competed for years. Sunisa as well. In Tokyo, Lee won the gold, just beating Andrade. At the 2023 World Championships, it was Biles for gold and Andrade for silver. Everyone expected the same in Paris.

Andrade had other plans. Raised as one of eight children on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, her mother cleaned houses to pay for her training. Andrade was talented. She was determined. She had a simple game plan … execute and hope.

Biles’ cumulative degree of difficulty on her four events here was 25.9. Andrade’s was 23.8, meaning Biles owned a 2.1-point advantage (a huge number in gymnastics) even if they performed their routines equally as well.

Biles was keenly aware of how tough Andrade was, though. On the vault, Biles wanted to attempt the easier Cheng but worried that she might need all the difficulty points she could get. So she went with the tougher Biles II, an absurd double back flip in pike position that few will even try because of the danger.

“I just knew how phenomenal of an athlete she is,” Biles said. “I [had] to bring out the big guns this time.”

As such, if Andrade was going to pull off one of the greatest and most stunning upsets in Olympic history, then she would need to outperform her qualifying scores and she would need Biles to make a bunch of errors, such as nearly falling off the uneven bars.

Well, two rotations in and Andrade was doing her part — .466 above qualifying and looking rock solid. And Biles was doing her part — .644 behind her qualifications and now trying to run numbers in her head.

If Simone Biles, the great Simone Biles, was going to beat her again, then Rebeca Andrade, the great Rebeca Andrade, was going to make her earn it.

“I was stressing,” Biles said.

“I swear,” Lee said, “I’ve never seen you that stressed.”

“I was probably praying to every single god out there,” Biles responded.

The group headed to the beam for the third rotation. The floor — Biles’ best event — would go last. Andrade led, but it was tenuous. The scoreboard was more psychological than meaningful.

With a 0.3 difficulty advantage on beam and a full 1.0 advantage on floor, Biles was actually still in the driver’s seat. Of course, that is easy to say when you don’t have to fly onto a four-inch-wide beam to deliver the hardest routine in the world that concludes with a full-twisting double back dismount.

Of course, this is Simone Biles. Bang; a 14.566 that was enough to slip back ahead of Andrade, who could only muster a 14.133.

Now came the floor, but Andrade wasn’t going to let Biles exhale. She delivered an exhilarating, crowd-pleasing routine. Unfortunately, she stepped out of bounds. Her score: 14.033. All Biles needed was a 13.867 to take gold. That’s not a lot for Simone, but again, what if she messed up, stepped out, stumbled?

Biles said she realizes she is “in the conversation of the greatest of all athletes.” She knows that she was the reason Bercy Arena was packed with celebrities all week — from actors (Tom Cruise) to singers (Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande) to other athletes (Stephen Curry, Serena Williams, Michael Phelps).

She owns — and wears — a diamond GOAT necklace, after all.

“Some people love it and some people hate it, so it’s the best of both worlds,” she joked.

Still, deep down, she still sees herself as “Simone Biles from Spring, Texas, who loves to flip.”

And right then and right there, she had to flip as well as she had ever flipped.

So she flipped as well as she had ever flipped, hammering her otherworldly opening pass, the one where she reaches 12 feet in the air, and remained in bounds. Three passes later and it was over, the crowd going crazy, the chants of “U-S-A, U-S-A” reigning down. Andrade cheered, too.

A 15.066 flashed on the scoreboard. She won by 1.119 points.

Biles became just the third woman to ever win two all-around golds, and the first since 1968, when it was a much different sport. Andrade would take a proud silver. Lee fought back herself to win bronze.

“I don’t want to compete with Rebeca no more,” Biles said afterward. “I’m tired. I’ve never had an athlete that close. … It brought out the best athlete in myself so I’m excited and proud to compete with her but no more.”

Andrade, sitting just to Biles’ right, could only smile.

This was one hell of a gymnastics meet in Paris on Thursday night, won by one hell of a gymnast over two others just like her.