Simone Biles wins Olympic all-around title; bronze for Suni Lee - ESPN

PARIS — Simone Biles remains peerless — even when she's not quite perfect.

The American gymnastics star held off Brazil's Rebeca Andrade during a tense Olympic all-around final Thursday. Biles' total of 59.131 was just over a point ahead of Andrade at 57.932, one of the closest calls Biles has ever endured at a major international event.

Sunisa Lee, the Tokyo Olympics champion, earned bronze despite spending much of the past 15 months dealing with multiple kidney diseases that left her return to the Games in doubt.

Still, the meet ended the way all the ones Biles has started and finished over the past 11 years have ended: with hugs and gold on the way.

And a silver goat chain — along with a gold medal — around the Greatest of All Time's neck.

«It is crazy that I am in the conversation of 'Greatest of all athletes' because I just still think, 'I'm Simone Biles from Spring, Texas who loves to flip,'» she said.

The margin was the smallest in a major international event since Biles captured the third of her record six world championships in 2015.

She was a teenager then. She's an icon now.

Biles, 27, who is redefining what a gymnast can do — and just as notably, for how long she can do it — is the third woman to become a two-time Olympic champion, joining Larisa Latynina of the Soviet Union in 1956 and 1960 and Vera Caslavska of Czechoslovakia in 1964 and 1968.

Biles also is the oldest woman to claim the biggest title in her sport since then-30-year-old Maria Gorokhovskaya of the Soviet Union won the first-ever Olympic all-around in Melbourne in 1952.

Yet the sixth gold and ninth overall Olympic medal — the same as Romanian great Nadia Comaneci, who was among a star-studded crowd that included the U.S. men's basketball team