DOHA, Qatar — When Simone Biles returned to the gym, almost exactly one year ago, there were fears to go along with her hopes.
She’d taken a year off after winning five medals at the Rio Olympics, four of them gold. She had a new coach, Laurent Landi, because longtime coach Aimee Boorman had moved to Florida. She didn’t want to get injured.
“And then just the fear of getting back to the level I was at,” Biles told USA TODAY Sports last Nov. 1, the day before she returned to gymnastics.
LOL.
Sorry. But that’s a good one.
Not only is Biles back to the level she was at in 2016, she’s surpassed it.
In less than a year.
Unless the athletes’ shuttle gets lost on the way to the Aspire Dome, or she gets bored halfway through Thursday’s meet and decides to go for pizza, Biles will become the first woman to win four all-around titles at the world gymnastics championships. Only Japan’s Kohei Uchimura, he of the six men’s titles, will have more.
Biles’ performance Saturday in qualifying was perhaps the best meet she’s ever had and, yes, that includes Rio. She debuted a vault so hard some of the top men can’t even do it — a roundoff with a half-twist onto the vaulting table and then a front double full somersault off — and it will now be named for her.
She posted the highest scores of the field on vault, floor exercise and balance beam, with her vault and floor scores more than a point better than the next gymnast. Biles’ score on uneven bars, her “worst” event, was second only to Belgium’s Nina Derwael, the reigning world bronze medalist and two-time European champion on the event.
Her score of 60.965 was 4½ points better than teammate Morgan Hurd, who just happens to be the reigning world champion.
Oh, and she did all this despite being in the emergency room until 1 a.m. the previous night with a kidney stone so large she’s dubbed it “The Pearl.”
“Capable maybe,” Biles said when asked to describe her performance, giving herself only a “six or a seven.”
OK, sure.
“I would say eight and a half,” Landi said. “It was pretty good.”
Have we mentioned that Biles hasn’t even been in the gym a year yet?
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