Rejuvenated Simone Biles chases more history at US gymnastics championships | More sports News – Times of India

NEW DELHI: Simone Biles is trying to make more gymnastics history this week at the US championships. The four-time Olympic winner could become the first person to win eight US national all-around titles.
The 26-year-old Texan won the US Classic earlier this month, her first competition in two years. She thrilled a sold-out crowd in suburban Chicago with an all-around score of 59.100 points, five more than the runner-up, Leanne Wong.
If she wins the all-around title on Sunday in San Jose, California, she will break the 90-year-old record set by Alfred Jochim when he won his seventh in 1933. Biles will tie that record in 2021 when she wins her seventh all-around title.
She could also become the oldest US women’s all-around winner since USA Gymnastics started in 1963.
Biles, who has won 19 world titles, lost two years of top-level competition after her rough run at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, which were put off because of a pandemic.

She came to Tokyo as an Olympic star, and everyone expected her to cap off her career by successfully defending the all-around title she won in 2016.
Instead, her challenge fell apart, and after having trouble in the early rounds of the team competition, she dropped out, claiming mental health problems. She also dropped out of the all-around, vault, uneven bars, and floor exercise before she got a bronze in balance beam.
Biles said she was suffering from the “twisties” — the phenomenon in which gymnasts become disoriented and lose their sense of where they are in the air. Her decision to withdraw from competition was widely hailed as a watershed moment for the issue of mental health in elite sports.
After her US Classic win, Biles proclaimed herself “in a really good spot.”
Despite some early nerves. she looked her old, brilliant self, especially in landing the most difficult vault in women’s gymnastics, the Yurchenko double pike.
The women’s competition on Friday and Sunday in San Jose will offer an even better yardstick as to how Biles measures up against a field that features 2002 world all-around silver medallist Shilese Jones, reigning Olympic all-around champion Sunisa Lee and fellow Olympians Jordan Chiles and Jade Carey.
Eight women, including the top two finishers, will be invited to a USA Gymnastics world team selection camp in September. From there, a five-woman team will be chosen for the World Championships in Antwerp — all pointing toward the 2024 Paris Olympics.
(With inputs from AFP)

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