Simone Biles wins record eighth U.S. gymnastics championship - ESPN

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A decade later, Simone Biles is still on top.

The gymnastics star won her record eighth U.S. championship on Sunday night, 10 years after she first ascended to the top of her sport as a teenage prodigy.

Biles, now a 26-year-old newlywed considered perhaps the greatest of all time, posted an all-around two-day total of 118.40, four points clear of runner-up Shilese Jones. Florida junior Leanne Wong claimed third, bolstering her chances of making a third straight world championship team.

Biles is all but assured of returning to the gym where she captured her first world title in 2013. Over the course of two electric nights at the SAP Center, she served notice that even after a two-year break following the Tokyo Olympics, in gymnastics there is the one referred to as the GOAT and there is everyone else.

Biles became the oldest woman to win a national title since USA Gymnastics began organizing the event in 1963. Her eight crowns moved her past Alfred Jochim, who won seven between 1925 and '33 when the Amateur Athletics Union ran the championships and the events in the men's competition included rope climbing.

«I don't think about numbers,» Biles said. «I think about my performance. And I think overall, I hit 8-for-8. I guess it's a lucky number this year.»

The sport has come a long way over the past century. No one has spent more time at the far end of the Bell curve than Biles, who over this decade has used her singular talents to push boundaries in more ways than one.

Peaks aren't supposed to last this long. Most elite gymnasts at 26 — at least the ones who haven't retired — are simply hoping to hold on to what they have.

Biles isn't interested in that. Never has been. She finds repetition boring. She