Simply the best – Simone Biles wins her second gold medal of Paris 2024

Simone Biles turned the concluding rotation of the women’s all-around final into a coronation as she emphatically underscored her status as the greatest gymnast of all time at the Bercy Arena in Paris.

Just as she had in the women’s team final two days ago, Biles closed the show with a soaring floor routine that confirmed her second gold medal of the Games by more than a point over her nearest rival, Rebeca Andrade of Brazil.

Despite superb preceding displays from Andrade and Biles’ team-mate, the defending all-around champion Sunisa Lee, by the time the all-conquering 27-year-old stepped onto a mat the outcome was a mere formality.

Biles’ score of 15.066 gave her a total of 59.131 that beat Andrade by 1.119 with Lee a further one and a half points behind in bronze. It gave Biles back the all-around title she first won in Rio in 2016.

Biles celebrated by embracing Lee, with whom she paraded with the USA flag, before dangling a silver goat necklace around her neck, a nod to her almost unanimously acknowledged status as the best her sport has seen and the ‘greatest of all time’.

But it was not quite so simple as it seemed for Biles, who found herself in third place at the halfway stage behind Andrade and the Algerian Kaylia Neymour after a minor error on the uneven bars.

Compared to her battle to overcome an attack of the ‘twisties’ in Tokyo, Biles’ subsequent rise to claim her sixth Olympic gold will barely register on the adversity scale.

But just as in Tokyo three years ago, when she bravely returned from her mental block to win a silver medal on the beam, it was her performance on the same piece of apparatus that paved her way back to the top of the podium.

Even the best gymnast in the world can get things wrong