By: Rachel Chen

On Thursday, August 1st, 2024, Simone Biles won her second Olympic all-around medal by more than a full point. She even made a mistake on the uneven bars event yet still surpassed Rebeca Andrade of Brazil, the silver medalist.

In her vault performance, Simone Biles executed the most difficult vault in the world, never done by any female ever before. This vault is called the Yurchenko double pike and gave Biles an eight-tenths of a point higher than Rebeca Andrade, who did a vault called a Cheng.

After a beautiful vault, Biles messed up on her performance on the uneven bars. She incorrectly transitioned from the high bar to the low bar, even bending her legs to avoid hitting the mat as well as swinging an extra rotation to regain balance and rhythm. Because of this mistake, Biles was in third place halfway through the all-around event.

The beam performance of Biles was not bad. All contestants wobbled slightly during their performances, but Biles kept it to a minimum. Biles ended with an outstanding full-twisting double back dismount, putting her back in first place with Andrade a couple tenths points behind her.

During the final performance, floor, Biles did a shocking triple-twisting double back flip with her knees tucked to her chest nicely, and a half-twisting double back flip with her body straight. The final performance gave her enough points to become the first woman in more than half of a century to win two Olympic all-around medals.

Sunisa Lee, Simone Biles’ teammate for Team USA, also the all-around champion at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, won bronze. By the time the floor performances came to an end, both Lee and Biles knew they were going to win medals. Both of them held up the American flag together and waited for their placements to be official.