Gymnastic World Championships: Simone Biles Qualifies For Her 20th Title
- Simone Biles qualifies for sixth Championships.
Simone Biles will compete for her 20th world title at the upcoming World Championships in Antwerp.
The four-time Olympic champion won the all-around women’s final at the US selection event to top qualification with a score of 55.700.
Biles, 26, will become the first woman to represent Team USA at six Artistic World Championships.
In August, she made a return to competition following a two-year hiatus to work on her mental health.
Biles marked her comeback by winning her eighth all-around title at the US Gymnastics Championships and breaking a 90-year record.
But at Tuesday’s selection event, it wasn’t her normal faultless display.
She fell on transition from high bar to low bar on uneven bars and was deducted half a point for pausing between two leaps on beam.
On the floor, she went out of bounds twice and in her final apparatus vault, she over rotated her Yurchenko double pike.
Shilese Jones, who finished second on 55.300, would have pipped Biles to a qualification spot had she have not received a one-point deduction on her final apparatus, uneven bars.
In 2021, Biles took a break from gymnastics after pulling out of five of her six finals at the delayed Tokyo Olympics.
She later explained she had been experiencing ‘the twisties’ – a kind of mental block where gymnasts can lose their sense of space in the air.
Team USA will announce the rest of their World Championship squad on Wednesday, with the competition taking place in Antwerp from 30 September to 8 October.
