Simone Biles has done it again.
The American gymnastics legend cruised to her ninth U.S. Championship Sunday with the highest two-day score in all four all-around events—balance beam, floor, uneven bars and vault—while notching a total of 119.750, 5.9 points above second-place Skye Blakely.
The masterclass shows the 27-year-old is in prime condition just a few weeks before Olympic trials are set to begin in Minneapolis.
“Today it’s just getting out here and getting comfortable and confident in my gymnastics and hopefully going to Olympic trials and making that next step towards Paris,” Biles told NBC, which broadcast the event live. “So, I couldn’t be more proud of how I’m doing this time in the year and just gaining that confidence over and over, getting myself back in front of a crowd and just doing what I do in practice.”
Over the course of her record-setting career, Biles has won four Olympic gold medals; a total she hopes to add to later this summer in Paris.
But it hasn’t always come easy for Biles, who bowed out of the Tokyo games in 2021 after experiencing a mental block gymnasts refer to as “the twisties,” which causes athletes to lose track of their body positioning during complicated and dangerous aerial maneuvers.
She stumbled once in the U.S. championships Sunday during the vault, when she fell while attempting the Yurchenko double pike, which involves two back flips. Biles was still awarded a high 15.000 score for the attempt—given its high difficulty and the fact that she remains the only woman to ever land one in competition.
She will face many of the same competitors later this month in Minneapolis at the U.S. Olympic trials—including Blakely and fourth-place Suni Lee, as well as Biles’ former Olympic teammates Jordan Chiles and Jade Carey.
This post was originally published on Daily Beast
