Sixteen-year-old Simone Biles made everyone forget the US came to the world championships without the defending and Olympic champions, beating teammate Kyla Ross in a nail-biting finish to win the all-around gold medal on Friday.
Biles and Ross were neck-and-neck throughout the evening, with Ross matching Biles’ athleticism and power with grace and elegance, leaving it to the concluding floor exercise to separate the two.
Biles jumped, twisted and strutted at will, and it turned into a victory dance in front of the many thousands clapping to her music in the Sports Palace.
Photo: AFP
“On floor I just have a lot of fun. That is the main key,” Biles said.
Aliya Mustafina of Russia, the 2010 champion, took bronze. Defending champion Jordyn Wieber and Olympic gold medalist Gabby Douglas skipped the event.
Biles also qualified for all four apparatus weekend finals — the first female US gymnast to do so since Shannon Miller in 1991.
Ross, who is also 16, led by a mere .016 points going into the floor routine, but there Biles turned on the power to win. Biles scored 60.216 points, while Ross ended with 59.332. Mustafina had 58.856.
Together, Biles and Ross showed the strength in depth the US team has early in the new Olympic cycle ahead of the 2016 Rio Games.
“We are hoping that these girls keep going all the way to the Olympics,” US women’s coach Martha Karolyi said.
And as good friends, Biles and Ross can go a long way together.
“We don’t really think ... of each other like competition,” Biles said. “So we try to have it the best way and think ‘wow, this is worlds, we still cannot even believe it.’”
From the outset, Biles set the challenge, picking a vault with extreme difficulty which needed only a small corrective step at the end, giving her a big score. Ross looked all smoothness and grace on hers, but her lower degree of difficulty made that easier.
The two Americans were leading after the first apparatus while Mustafina immediately had a huge task ahead since she had to make up almost a full point.
Ross made it even tighter with a flowing performance on the uneven bars to trail Biles by less than a tenth of a point halfway through the contest, with Mustafina in striking distance, half a point behind.
Then it came down to the balance beam.
Biles was out first and nailed all the big jumps. Ross did even better, though, and barely moved in front with a 44.999-44.983 advantage.
It set up the perfect finale.
Even if Ross looked near flawless in her floor routine, her starting difficulty was much lower than the one Biles put on and it helped make the difference.
Bayer 04 Leverkusen go into today’s match at TSG 1899 Hoffenheim stung from their first league defeat in 16 months. Leverkusen were beaten 3-2 at home by RB Leipzig before the international break, the first loss since May last year for the reigning league and cup champions. While any defeat, particularly against a likely title rival, would have disappointed coach Xabi Alonso, the way in which it happened would be most concerning. Just as they did in the Supercup against VfB Stuttgart and in the league opener to Borussia Moenchengladbach, Leverkusen scored first, but were pegged back. However, while Leverkusen rallied late to
If all goes well when the biggest marathon field ever gathered in Australia races 42km through the streets of Sydney on Sunday, World Marathon Majors (WMM) will soon add a seventh race to the elite series. The Sydney Marathon is to become the first race since Tokyo in 2013 to join long-established majors in New York, London, Boston, Berlin and Chicago if it passes the WMM assessment criteria for the second straight year. “We’re really excited for Sunday to arrive,” race director Wayne Larden told a news conference in Sydney yesterday. “We’re prepared, we’re ready. All of our plans look good on
The lights dimmed and the crowd hushed as Karoline Kristensen entered for her performance. However, this was no ordinary Dutch theater: The temperature was 80°C and the audience naked apart from a towel. Dressed in a swimsuit and to the tune of emotional music, the 21-year-old Kristensen started her routine, performed inside a large sauna, with a bed of hot rocks in the middle. For a week this month, a group of wellness practitioners, called “sauna masters,” are gathering at a picturesque health resort in the Netherlands to compete in this year’s Aufguss world sauna championships. The practice takes its name from a
When details from a scientific experiment that could have helped clear Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva landed at the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the leader of the organization’s reaction was unequivocal: “We have to stop that urgently,” he wrote. No mention of the test ever became public and Valieva’s defense at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) went on without it. What effect the information could have had on Valieva’s case is unclear, but without it, the skater, then 15 years old, was eventually disqualified from the 2022 Winter Olympics after testing positive for a banned heart medication that would later