Vault + bars + beam + floor = gold for Simone Biles.

By Maggie AstorGabriela BhaskarChang W. Lee and Daniel Berehulak

Simone Biles won her second career Olympic all-around title on Thursday by more than a full point after recovering from a mistake on the uneven bars to fend off a strong challenge from Rebeca Andrade of Brazil, who won the silver medal.

Vault

Biles performed the world’s most difficult vault, the Yurchenko double pike, which no other woman has done. The difficulty value gave her a cushion of eight-tenths of a point over Andrade, who performed a vault called a Cheng. While Andrade’s vault was nearly flawless and Biles took a step backward on her landing, that cushion put Biles solidly in the lead after the first rotation.

Bars

Biles made a significant mistake on the uneven bars, positioning herself incorrectly on a transition from the high bar to the low bar such that she had to bend her legs to avoid hitting the mat and then do an extra swing to regain her rhythm. It was a big enough error that Andrade and Kaylia Nemour of Algeria both pulled ahead of her, leaving her in third place at the halfway point of the competition. Biles’s teammate Sunisa Lee, meanwhile, started to make up ground.

Beam

All of the eventual medalists had at least slight wobbles on the balance beam, but Biles kept hers to a minimum and pulled back into the lead, capping her routine with an extremely difficult full-twisting double back dismount. Andrade, whose routine was a little less difficult than Biles’s and who had slightly more severe execution errors, remained within a couple tenths of a point of her, keeping the pressure on heading into the final rotation.

Floor

With her distinct floor routine, Biles cemented her lead and became the first woman in more than half a century to win two Olympic all-around titles. The routine included two skills named after her: a triple-twisting double back flip with her knees tucked to her chest, and a half-twisting double back flip with her body straight. Andrade stepped out of bounds once but held on to place second, and Lee hit a solid routine for bronze.

Lee, the all-around champion at the Tokyo Games in 2021, hit a solid routine that guaranteed her the bronze medal, starting with a full-twisting double back flip that she landed so well that she looked visibly thrilled as her feet hit the ground. By the time the last score was announced, Biles and Lee already knew what it would show. They were waiting by the side of the floor with an American flag for the moment it became official.

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