DOHA, Qatar — Give Simone Biles all the medals!
Biles qualified for every final at the world gymnastics championships, giving her the chance to do something that’s almost unprecedented. Not since Ludmilla Tourischeva in 1974 has a woman won six medals at a single world championships.
Daniela Silivas also won a medal in every event, but the Romanian did it at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.
Biles and the Americans qualified first in the team competition. She also qualified first in the all-around, vault, floor exercise and balance beam, and had the second-highest score on uneven bars.
Biles won five medals at the Rio Olympics in 2016, as well as the 2014 and 2015 world championships. She never had a chance for a personal six-pack, however, because she didn’t make the uneven bars final at any of those events.
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But her new coach, Laurent Landi, is the closest thing there is to an uneven bars whisperer — he coached 2015 co-world champion Madison Kocian — and he’s helped Biles make dramatic improvement on her “worst” event. So much so that Biles was only two-tenths behind Nina Derwael, the reigning world bronze medalist and two-time European champion on the event.
That was despite Biles making a significant error, her legs flailing backwards while she did a handstand on the upper bar. And having spent the previous night in the emergency room with a kidney stone.
“Definitely thought I was going to come off that bar,” she said after qualifying Saturday. “I was like, 'Oh my good Lord, have mercy, help me right now!’”
She stayed on, and actually wound up with the highest execution score (8.666) on the event.
Biles has made the uneven bars final only one other time, finishing fourth in 2013. That’s why, when asked before worlds what individual medal she’d most want to win, she named bars.
“I’ve never medaled in a bar final,” she said earlier this month. “Maybe if I would make bar final, I think that would be pretty cool.”
Bringing home a six-pack wouldn't be too shabby, either.
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Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.
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