Why Simone Biles was 'stressing' big time during gymnastics all-around final

PARIS — Simone Biles is used to being in rare territory.

Not like this, however.

For the first time since the Rio Games in 2016, she found herself trailing in an all-around competition at a world championships or Olympics. Not just trailing, either. In third place at the midway point in the competition.

“I don’t like that feeling. I was STRESSING!” Biles said afterward, able to laugh about it once her second Olympic gold medal of the Paris Games was secured.

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Biles was heavily favored to win the all-around women's gymnastics title here. She has won every all-around competition she’s been in going back to the summer of 2011, and last year won her sixth world title. She had the highest individual score in qualifying and again in Tuesday night’s team final.

And, in the first event, it looked as if it was going to be more of the same.

Biles opened with her signature Yurchenko double pike vault. Though she took a big hop back on the landing, the YDP’s difficulty value is so great — at 6.4, it’s 0.8 points higher than the next-hardest vault — that she had a 0.666-point lead over her main rival, Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade.

Then she went to uneven bars. Biles appeared to get too far away on a skill on the high bar, which then affected her momentum as she transitioned to the low bar. She had to bend her legs to keep herself from scraping the mat, and barely caught the low bar.

“That’s not the bars that I’ve been training. Out of all of the events, I think bars is the one I haven’t messed up on once. The whole entire training, here or back in Houston,” she said.

She didn’t fall off the apparatus, but the deductions were almost as costly. Biles looked furious as she came off the podium and again when her score, a 13.733, came up.

“I was like, 'Oh, goodness,” she said. “Thank God we did the (Yurchenko) double pike today because I wasn’t planning on it. But I just knew how phenomenal of an athlete (Andrade) is. On each event, we’re very similar in scores, so I was like, 'OK, I think I have to bring out the big guns this time.’”

As the rotation continued, the cameras showed Biles sitting cross-legged in a chair, her face a mask of intensity.

“Probably praying to every single god out there,” Biles said about what she’d been doing. “… Just refocusing and making sure that as soon as we go to beam, since I’m first up, I can just recenter myself and finish the rest of the competition, because it’s not over until it’s over.

“But I was a little bit disappointed in my performance on bars. That’s not usually how I swing,” Biles added. “I’m not the best bars swinger — I’m not like Suni (Lee) or Kaylia (Nemour), but I can swing some bars, you know?”

The bars score dropped Biles behind both Andrade and Nemour. Not by a huge margin, 0.267 points, but this just doesn’t happen. Since Rio, when she trailed Russia's Aliya Mustafina after bars, Biles has always had a lead.

It didn’t take long for Biles to restore order, however.

Up first on beam, she delivered a confident and secure routine. Though her wolf turn got a little loose and she needed a slight balance check on an aerial somersault, most of her ridiculously difficult routine was done with ease and grace, as if she was saying, “Oh, you like this? Here’s another trick.”

Biles got a 14.566, the highest score of the night on beam, and took a 0.166 lead over Andrade into the final event.

Andrade’s floor routine doesn’t have the same difficulty as Biles, and she stepped out on the landing of her first pass. When Biles landed her first pass, the triple-twisting, double-somersault that is now known as the Biles II, the gold was hers.

Biles finished with 59.131 points, 1.199 points ahead of Andrade. It’s the closest victory she’s had since the 2015 world championships, when she beat Gabby Douglas by 1.083 points.

“I don’t want to compete with Rebeca no more. I’m tired!” Biles said. “It’s way too close. … It definitely put me on my toes, and it brought out the best athlete in myself. So I’m excited and proud to compete with her but uh, uh, uh. I don’t like it!

“But I knew if I did my work,” Biles added, “it would all be fine.”

It was. She was back in rare territory, once again for the right reason.