Simone Biles’s Comeback Tour Reaches Historic Heights at U.S. National Championships

If there was any doubt remaining about her ability to find her old form after returning to competition earlier this month, she extinguished it this weekend.

Even Simone Biles can’t believe what Simone Biles can do.

Her body must have understood that she was nailing her floor routine Sunday en route to winning her eighth national all-around title—a first for any gymnast, male or female—because she beamed as she hit skill after skill, but her brain had no idea. When the 15.400—the best score of the weekend on floor, and second overall only to her own vault—flashed, she gaped.

“I was like, Damn, I need to see that routine,” she said, likening the experience to a fever dream. “[My teammates were] like, ‘You stuck every pass!’ I was like, ‘I did?’ Because I’m in the moment. It just doesn’t feel real for some reason. I just seriously can’t believe I’m out here competing again. I just really can’t, so I’m proud of myself for that.”

The U.S. national championships at the SAP Center marked the second stop on her comeback tour two years after she withdrew from all but one event at the Tokyo Olympics while she battled a case of what gymnasts call the twisties, a dangerous loss of spatial awareness. Three weeks ago, Biles, 26, dominated the competition at the U.S. Classic outside Chicago, while feeling, she admitted Sunday, “Like, oh God, I don’t want to do this. I feel like I’m gonna throw up.”

And this week? “I was like, Oh, wow! Championships came so soon! We’re ready to compete. We’re prepared,” she said.

The result was yet another dominant showing. She captured the all-around title with a score of 114.45, an astonishing 3.9 points ahead of Shilese Jones, who had the meet of her life to finish second. Biles also finished first on the balance beam and the floor exercise and third on the uneven bars. She posted the highest scores on the vault on both Day 1 and Day 2 of competition but was ineligible for the vault title because, after tweaking her ankle Friday, she performed only one vault Sunday. (“There was no need to do it just for show,” said her coach, Laurent Landi.)

Biles is back at the top of her sport less than a month after officially returning to the mat :: Kyle Terada/USA TODAY Sports

Biles has won the all-around title in every national championships in which she has competed as a senior, beginning in 2013, when she announced herself to the world as a 16-year-old beaming through her braces. So much has changed since that weekend. She has become the greatest gymnast of all time, competing four skills that have since been named for her, with a fifth to come if she lands her Yurchenko double pike on vault in international competition, and reaching such stature that her opponents openly admit they are shooting for silver. She has fought against the bureaucracy of a sport in which adults so often do not protect the children in their charge. And more recent, she has started a conversation about how athletes respond to pressure.

Her time away from the sport helped her understand who she is away from gymnastics, she has said, and allowed her to learn more about what her body needs.

“I think it’s training smarter,” she said. “Trying to get those numbers in but still being efficient with that. It’s like, let’s not take an hour on this event. Let’s get out in 20 minutes. Knock that stuff out.”

Whatever she’s doing is working. She paced the field basically the entire way this weekend. At several points, she led a handful of other gymnasts despite being a rotation behind them.

“Maybe some people think it’s easier for her,” Landi said, alluding to her physical gifts. “It’s not easier for her.”

Maybe not, but the results are so much better. As she saluted the judges before her floor routine, nearly all her peers—if you can call them that—paused to watch. Biles may not remember what came next, but the sellout crowd of 11,992 certainly will.

As “Unicorn” by Noa Kirel blasted, Biles seemed to float across the floor. She nailed every one of her elements. Landi said it was “the best floor routine I’ve ever seen her do.”

As she strode off the floor, her teammate Jordan Chiles greeted her with an exaggerated bow, then hyped the crowd as it gave her a standing ovation.

“Honestly, it’s really cool being able to have somebody like her,” Chiles said afterward. “She’s an idol, an icon in the sport.”

Biles declined to be specific about what her goals are—“y’all are kind of nosy sometimes,” she said with a grin—but everyone in her camp talks as if they are planning on being in Paris next summer. In the meantime, in a formality, she will attend selection camp before next month’s world championships in Belgium. It’s hard to predict what new heights she will achieve there. Even she might have to see it to believe it.