“She has certainly proven herself the last three years as the greatest.”īiles can prove it further this weekend. “You know people say, oh, the queen’s coronation,” she said. Karolyi is retiring after these Olympics, her 11th, and considers the two gymnasts equal bookends.īoorman stressed that Thursday’s rout was “a cherry on top” rather than the whole sundae so many make the Olympics out to be. Karolyi’s praise of Biles was about as effusive as it can get, though she did stop short of saying Biles ranked above Nadia Comaneci, the first gymnast she and husband Bela helped coach to an Olympic all-around title in 1976. “It passes through your mind in the moment when something comes out as good as this.” “You think back of all those years, how everything started and how many struggles and hurdles we had to pass in order to get to this point,” Karolyi said after a starving Biles went off for a round of interviews and then drug testing. When Karolyi beamed at Biles 10 minutes after the medal ceremony, she was reflective. And we ended up here with a gold medal.”īiles’ victory by 2.1 points on Thursday was nearly double her largest world championships margin. And then the next year it was like, OK, let’s keep going and see where we ended up. And I didn’t want to hold her back because my original thought was, what if this is the only chance she ever gets was that first worlds? So, yeah, let’s go gangbusters. “Well, she maintained it, and she continued to get better through the quad. “People were like, she’s never going to make to the Olympics because of the curse, and you’re not going to pace her, and there’s no way you can maintain this level of excellence,” Boorman said. When Biles won the 2013 World title, she was the 10th different highest-finishing American at the Olympics or worlds in the last 10 years. all-around titles three weeks later and began her march toward winning every major international all-around title in this Olympic cycle.Īt first, the gymnastics community wondered if Biles would burn out with three years before the next Olympics. Championships tune-up meet that she was pulled by Boorman before completing the competition. Then she moved up to the senior age level in 2013. “It’s about having patience and working on little things.”īiles was too young for London 2012, not that she was competitive with any member of the Fierce Five then anyway. “She started to understand that gymnastics is not only about throwing big tricks,” Karolyi said. Karolyi and Boorman agreed in separate interviews that Biles’ improvement started showing in about one year. “So it completely had to change her lifestyle.” “Before that, she was just a kid who worked out 20 hours a week and played in the gym and hung out with her friends,” Boorman said. So Biles made the tearful, social life-sacrificing decision not to attend public high school, freeing up hours to pursue elite gymnastics.
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