Simone Biles - Vault, Bars, Beam, Floor - 2014 World AA (60fps)
The USA women"s gymnastics team reacts to being selected to compete in the Rio Olympics.
Three-time world champion Simone Biles.(Photo: Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY Sports)
RIO DE JANEIRO The lineup for womens gymnastics qualifying was hardly a surprise after podium training on Thursday.
As expected, Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas and Aly Raisman will compete in the all-around. It came down to Raisman and 16-year-old Laurie Hernandez for the last all-around spot.
Hernandez, who went pro earlier this week, was an early favorite to grab an all-around spot after finishing third at U.S. championships and second at trials in July.
Douglas the defending Olympic gold medalist pulled ahead of Hernandez in the past three weeks, making marked improvement in the pre-Olympic training camp.
In podium training, it was clear Raismans gymnastics were better than Hernandezs. A member of the Fierce Five, Raisman has two gold medals and a bronze from the London Olympics. Shes 22 this time around, and shes performing better gymnastics than she was four years ago.
It obviously would mean a lot to me, Raisman said Thursday. I know that it is between me and Laurie, but at the same time, I think that we both kind of have the mindset that weve done everything that we possibly can. We both respect each other for it.
Biles, the three-time world champion and favorite to win multiple golds here, was a virtual lock for the all-around.
The Americans can only send two gymnasts to the all-around final under the two-per-country rule, so someone will be on the outside looking in.
At world championships last year, that was Raisman. Biles and Douglas went on to finish first and second.
The Americans are heavily favored to win a second consecutive team gold in Martha Karolyis final Olympics as national team coordinator. Shes retiring after the competition ends here.
The current team is the best weve ever had, Bela Karolyi, her husband and legendary gymnastics coach, said last month. Its very hard just coming out of my mouth because I never said in my life before big competitions that we are unbeatable or something like that. But at that time, I am saying we are unbeatable in the team competition.
Heres a look at the lineup for the USA:
Vault: Hernandez, Douglas, Raisman, Biles
Uneven bars: Raisman, Biles, Douglas, Madison Kocian
Simone Biles - Floor Exercise - 2016 P&G Gymnastics Championships – Sr. Women Day 2
The floor of the XL Center is a blur of pint-sized pre-teens wrapped in brightly colored leotards taking turns on various gymnastics apparatuses swinging from the uneven bars, pirouetting on the balance beam, surging down the carpeted run and exploding off the vault. A Patton-sized American flag overlooks the arena seats that are nearly empty with doors still two hours away. Its a Friday morning in June ahead of the Secret US Classic, a qualifying meet for the national championships and a tune-up ahead of the next months Olympic trials in San Jose, where the five-person US womens team will be finalized. The opening ceremony of the Rio Games is two months away.
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Ive come to Hartford for an audience with the best athlete in America today: a 4ft 8in, 105lb sprite from suburban Houston. When I spot her, shes seated on the edge of the competition podium in a black Nike tank top that exposes her muscular arms and conforms neatly to her chiseled abs. Her hair is pulled back in a high ponytail with a colored bow and her legs dangle several feet from the floor. The megawatt smile thats separated a flock of Madison Avenue speculators from their quarterly budgets disarms onlookers from her casual perch.
Anyone with even a passing interest in gymnastics has known about Simone Biles for years. Although shes yet to compete in an Olympics she was born three months short of the age cutoff for London 2012 the 19-year-old has already been widely hailed as the most talented gymnast in history. Last year Biles became the first woman ever to capture a third straight world all-around championship, finishing an eye-popping 1.083 points ahead of her team-mate and reigning Olympic champion Gabby Douglas. Shes won 14 overall medals at worlds, including 10 golds, and is the first woman since 1974 to win four consecutive all-around titles at US nationals. Its been three years since she entered an all-around competition and didnt walk away the winner.
Four years ago Douglas arrived in London without a single endorsement, burst from relative obscurity to win the all-around title and flew home with corporate sponsors in frenzied pursuit. By contrast, Biles, who signed with Nike last year, already has deals with Hersheys, Procter & Gamble, Kelloggs, United Airlines, Coca-Cola and GK Elite Sportswear. A personalized emoji keyboard app cheekily named Simoji launched this week. Its the sort of portfolio built not on promise alone but preordination. Indeed, Biles is not only the overwhelming favorite to win the all-around Olympic title, but could bring home as many as five gold medals from Rio to cement a legacy that for years has seemed a foregone conclusion. Already a superstar in the parochial world of gymnastics, Biles will soon be a household name.
Theyre the sort of impossible expectations that for an ordinary athlete might presage disaster. But Biles is not an ordinary athlete.
Its pretty easy, she says of the pressure thats only redoubled with each appearance during an unbeaten run spanning three years and 12 competitions. Because for you guys watching its different than me doing the gymnastics. When Im out there Im not thinking, Oh my gosh, I have so much pressure, because Im the one doing it. Its easier doing it than watching it.
What separates Biles is not the boundary-pushing blend of speed, power and strength that makes observers feel like theyre gazing into a wormhole, the routine conjuring of leap-forward moments that are the stock-in-trade of once-in-a-generation talents: the Bo Jacksons, LeBron Jameses and Manny Pacquiaos. Nor is it her otherworldly consistency and perfection, the way she seemingly always manages to stick the landing no matter how preposterous the maneuver. Rather its a blankness of mind seemingly tailor-made for a sport that will break those prone to self-conscious fear. To behold this brilliance in the flesh here in Connecticut after years of tracking her ascent on television and YouTube is stirring enough, though surely it will pale in comparison to the moment when she makes her date with destiny in Rio.
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Biles backstory is a departure from the saccharine, soft-focus features typically associated with American gymnasts. She was born in Columbus, Ohio, and placed into foster care amid her mothers struggles with drugs and alcohol. The rambunctious toddler was adopted when she was five with her younger sister by her biological grandparents Nellie, a former nurse, and Ron, an air traffic controller and relocated to Spring, Texas, just outside Houston.
Simone Biles competes on the balance beam at the US Olympic trials in July. Photograph: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
Her introduction to gymnastics was accidental. When a planned field trip to a ranch with her day-care class was canceled due to an oppressive heatwave, the group was instead taken to Bannons Gymnastix. She returned home that day with a note that suggested her parents enroll the six-year-old in lessons. Two years later Biles was discovered at the Houston gym by Aimee Boorman, a then-neophyte to the world of elite gymnastics who remains her coach and surrogate mom today.
The youngsters route to the top was not a straight shot. She battled flexibility issues in the junior ranks and endured a string of poor results. As she approached the senior level the 14-year-old faced a choice: withdraw from public school and increase her practice regimen which today consists of 32 hours of training over six days a week or enjoy the life of a regular teenager and remain on the outside of the elite ranks.
Biles opted for home-schooling and the monastic life of a champion gymnast, initially prompting hard-won progress in her results. But she reached a nadir at the 2013 Secret US Classic, where she fell on the uneven bars, nearly toppled off the beam and botched her floor exercise before Boorman withdrew her from the vault.
Thats when Biles parents enlisted a sports psychologist to help the teenager work through her nerves. Soon after she received an invitation from legendary national team coordinator Martha Karolyi to train at the Karolyi Ranch, the fabled training center for the US team. The results were immediate. By the end of her rookie campaign as a senior Biles had finished second at the American Cup, outduelled compatriot Kyla Ross for a breakthrough all-around national title, then followed it up with a world championship six weeks later in Antwerp. From then on its been a meteoric rise.
She trains a short 10-minute drive from home at the World Champions Centre, a 56,000 sq ft gym commissioned by her parents as a retirement venture shortly after her breakout 2013 season. By now she is a megastar in the siloed world of gymnastics. She recalls a story at this years Pacific Rim Gymnastics Championships one of the few meets shes entered during a stripped-down schedule designed for her to peak in Rio where she skipped the event finals after a strong day one and watched the second day from a box. After a group of young girls noticed her, Biles said she had to call security to keep them from climbing into the suite.
The inevitability of Biles coronation is not simply a product of her ability, but of the scoring system that has governed the sport for the past decade. Back in 2006, gymnastics abandoned the perfect-10 system for an open-ended model. Todays competitors are scored relative to each skills degree of difficulty with deductions taken for imperfections. Biles start values are so far beyond her rivals that she effectively enters competitions with a full point advantage. The value of that insurance policy could be seen in November, when she overcame a mistake on the balance beam and a step out of bounds on floor exercise to still win by the biggest margin of her three world championships.
Critics bemoan the emphasis on power and athleticism at the expense of the balletic artistry favored in the past, but theres no questioning the physical asks it demands of todays top flight. The trend has not advanced without resistance. When Carlotta Ferlito finished 11th behind Biles at 2013 worlds, the Italian gymnasts frustration boiled over into racist invective: I told [team-mate Vanessa Ferrari] that next time we should also paint our skin black, so then we could win too.
Under the new system there have been countries who aim for more scaled-back routines and simply look to stick them, then others who push the envelope for difficulty and roll the dice for bigger scores. Then theres Biles, who dials up the most difficult programs of all and seldom ever misses.
Just when we thought we were at the physical limit of the sport, then here comes Simone Biles, the beloved 1984 Olympic all-around champion Mary Lou Retton told a gaggle of reporters at the US Olympic gymnastics team trials this summer. Shes the best Ive ever seen.
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In countless interviews Boorman has praised Biles air sense, the inimitable presence of mind and knack for 360-degree balance when her body is mid-air. But when striving to understand what truly sets Biles apart, a friend of mine and an former elite-level gymnast characterizes her as super surface and not a deep thinker descriptions that might sound like slights but within context embody the nature of Biles true brilliance. Many gymnasts spent the hours, minutes and seconds before a routine in reveries of intense self-reflection, a desperate search for quietude amid tumult often these days between the refuge of Beats headphones. Not so for Biles, who is laughing it up and joking around with team-mates until the very last second.
I love to see her mindset going into things, Douglas said in Hartford. Sometimes you just watch her on the side because shes so calm with everything. And I think thats how everybody needs to be. So calm, so confident. Shes an amazing competitor. She really is.
Perhaps that blankness is what separates Biles from her rivals as much as any physical superiority. As wrote David Foster Wallace in 1994: The real secret behind top athletes genius, then, may be as esoteric and obvious and dull and profound as silence itself. The real, many-veiled answer to the question of just what goes through a great players mind as he stands at the center of hostile crowd-noise and lines up the free-throw that will decide the game might well be: nothing at all.
Behold the Amanar vault that she stuck at last years US nationals with computerized precision. Or the signature move of her floor routine, a maneuver so difficult it is known simply as The Biles. Originally devised to alleviate persisting pain from a bone spur in her ankle, it consists of two backward flips with her body fully extended followed by a half-turn that enables a forward-facing landing.
Beyond the technical splendor Biles performs with an exuberance thats been missing a sport thats leaned self-serious of late. Theres something about her stature: shes so small but stands so tall. When she captured her fourth consecutive national title last month in St Louis with a career-high score (125.000) nearly four points ahead of second-place finisher Aly Raisman, Biles spotted 2008 Olympic all-around champion Shawn Johnson in the stands and punctuated a movement with a cheeky wink.
The priority for Biles during the run-up to her long-awaited Olympic debut has been remaining healthy, a concept she laughs at. Literally anything can happen at any time, she says. But its not like I walk into the gym every day and am like, Oh my gosh, I need to stay healthy like everyone else telling me. How does one stay healthy? I know I come in and train but you cant just force it upon me. I think I do a pretty good job but its not something you can control.
Said Karolyi during a conference call last week: Shes very talented, shes physically explosive, and she knows how to come out from those very difficult skills. She brought gymnastics up a level with very difficult skills made to look like theyre executed easily. Besides this great talent, behind the performance, its a very regimented and dedicated work. Nobody can become a world champion just because theyre born with talent.
She is in a very good training system, she regularly comes to camps here, doing the pre-Olympic training focusing on details and refining things. She is a big contender to be on top at the Games if everything goes in the direction were going right now.
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Two days after the shortest member of US Olympic delegation marches into the Maracan alongside her 554 team-mates in Fridays opening ceremony, Biles will finally make her Olympic debut when the gymnastics competition gets underway at the Arena Olmpica do Rio. Shes favored to win no less than four gold medals: Biles is a longshot only in the uneven bars, where the smart money is on American team-mate Madison Kocian and Chinas Fan Yilin to jockey for gold.
When Im out there Im not thinking, Oh my gosh, I have so much pressure, because I"m the one doing it
She faces the same pressure as anyone going to the Olympic Games, says Karolyi. We had to make sure that they dont feel outside pressure it should be coming from inside, making sure that they do their best performance and if they do their best performance, what theyre capable of and prepared for, everything will be OK. They dont need to put any other pressure, and we talk about this very often. The person you want to please is yourself, and if you set high standards for yourself and you put the work behind it, you will be happy regardless of the outcome. Youre not thinking of the outcome, but of the process. If its done correctly, you will be satisfied.
Simones in a good place.
Born on an inconvenient temporal fault line for Olympic purposes, Biles is non-committal about whether this years Games would be her final competition I havent thought about it yet but at least acknowledged the possibility that she may never grace this stage again. That means her first appearance on the sports grandest platform may also be her swansong, only dialing up the pressure. Not that it bothers her much.
How can great athletes shut off the Iago-like voice of the self? Wallace asked. How can they bypass the head and superbly act?
The answer, to hear Biles tell it, is as elementary as a front somersault: by just doing it.
That our job, she says. Were not supposed to make anything look hard.
Simone Biles - Vault 1 (end view) - 2016 P&G Gymnastics Championships - Sr. Women Day 2
The national titles are starting to run together for Simone Biles, a three-year blur of near flawlessly executed routines and carry-on cases full of medals.
If Biles is being honest, the fourth straight all-around championship she cruised to on Sunday night wasn"t so much a competition as an exhibition and one more thing for Biles to scratch off her checklist before the next real test, the one that in some ways will help define her legacy:
Rio de Janeiro and the Summer Olympics.
It"s a destination Biles is finally allowing herself to think after putting up a two-day total of 125.00 the highest during her historic run at the top to beat three-time Olympic medalist Aly Raisman by nearly four points. Only next week"s Olympic Trials, a mere formality, stand between the 19-year-old Texan and the global stage.
"I guess there"s really no other steps besides trials and making the team," Biles said. "We"re one step ahead again."
Technically Biles has been there for years. She hasn"t lost a meet since July, 2013 while creating a gap between herself and the rest of the planet, one that shows no signs of closing with 40 days to go before opening ceremonies in Brazil. Biles began the night with a dynamic floor exercise that combines peerless tumbling with the kind of charisma that should play in living rooms across the world in August.
She followed it up with a difficult Amanar vault one of the most challenging currently being done in competition in which she seemed to drop out of the sky before landing. Only a minuscule hop stood between Biles and perfection, just enough of a miscue for judges to deduct a tenth of a point while giving her a 9.9 for execution.
"I don"t think there"s any such thing as perfect in gymnastics anymore," Biles said. "They always find something."
Biles is as close as the sport gets at the moment as the leader of a team that will be heavily favored to dominate the podium in Brazil. The five-woman Olympic squad won"t be officially announced until July 10. Biles" place is secure, and the picture around her appears to be rapidly clearing up.
Raisman began the year struggling with her form following a disappointing by her standards performance at the 2015 world championships, when she failed to qualify for the all-around final after finishing behind Biles and Olympic champion Gabby Douglas during qualifying.
The 22-year-old spent the winter vowing to regain Karolyi"s trust and now finds herself in perhaps the finest stretch of a career that includes two golds and a bronze from the 2012 games.
Steady on beam. Powerful on floor. Efficient on uneven bars, Raisman may be the best gymnast in the world not named Biles at the moment. The current Olympic champion on floor exercise began the night with a gravity defying tumbling pass she managed to finish with a smile. She joked after the first round on Friday that staying within a couple of points of Biles would be a victory in itself. Raisman"s score of 60.650 on Sunday was just 1.5 behind her good friend.
"I think that I am better (than I was four years ago)," Raisman said. "And I feel like I"m on track to be a better gymnast than I was."
Raisman isn"t the only one surging. So is electric 16-year-old Laurie Hernandez, who looks right at home on the big stage in her first year at the senior level. Her routines are is a study in attitude and aggression, character traits Karolyi prizes as much as any cleanly executed skill.
Gabby Douglas, trying to become the first gymnast in nearly 50 years to repeat as Olympic champion, ended up fourth and admitted she needed to improve after a sloppy night on Friday. Douglas got off to a shaky start as she fought to stay on bars the event that first drew Karolyi"s admiration and posted a pedestrian 14.5. She was better on balance beam, landing her dismount with an emphatic stick that might as well have served as a reminder of what she can do when she"s on.
"Trials, I"ll be better a trials," Douglas said with a laugh.
The only real drama heading to San Jose is likely for the fifth and final spot. Madison Kocian, who won gold on uneven bars at last fall"s world championships, continued her impressive comeback from a leg injury in February. Though she was second to Ashton Locklear on bars at nationals, she also finished in the top half of the field on beam and floor, versatility that would be valuable in international competitions as Karolyi tries to put together a group for the three-up, three-count crucible that is the Olympic team finals.
Karolyi began the weekend with a team in mind and didn"t see much to change her preferences over the course of two nights. Whoever hops the plane to Rio will go as the heavy favorites to bring back copious amounts of gold led by Biles, who is head and shoulders, legs and everything else above the rest.
