LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Now to Paris, where Simone Biles cemented her legacy as the greatest gymnast of all time. She helped the U.S. reclaim the throne at the Olympic team event earlier this week. And last night, she became just the third woman ever to win a second gold medal in the individual all-around final. NPR sports correspondent Becky Sullivan was there and joins me now. Hi, Becky.
BECKY SULLIVAN, BYLINE: Good morning.
FADEL: OK, so often when Simone Biles is competing, her win is kind of never in doubt, but that's not what happened last night, right? Tell us about it.
SULLIVAN: Yeah, absolutely. So on her second of the four events last night, she had to do the uneven bars. And if she has a weakness, this is it. She had a really shaky routine, which is unusual for her. Like, she was trying to swing from the high bar to the low bar and just had like a poor swing, where she lost momentum, barely made it to the lower bar. Her knees almost touched the ground. And afterward, with the low score from that, she was in third place behind some very strong competition. And so basically, Simone Biles was in a position where she had to mount a comeback, which is unusual for her. She ended up performing, the way the lineup worked out, the very last routine of the night, the floor exercise.
SULLIVAN: And she was in a position where she needed to hit without any major mistakes to win. And by the time she was coming down on her final pass, she was already smiling because she knew she had pulled it off. And so the individual all around event in the Olympics is usually a situation where gymnasts have to perform perfectly to win, and it really is a testament to Simone Biles that she can have a mistake that big and still pull off a decisive win. She ended up winning by a little over a point.
FADEL: Wow. So I know she wears the necklace, but is she the GOAT, the greatest of all time?
SULLIVAN: Yeah, I mean, so this was her ninth Olympic medal. Six of them are gold. There are three more events to go for her, so three more opportunities to win even more medals. And so if we're talking gymnasts, you know, technically, there is another gymnast with, as of today, double the Olympic medals of Simone. That is Larissa Latynina of the Soviet Union. But it's - I think it's just hard to compare gymnastics of that era, the 1950s and '60s...
FADEL: Right.
SULLIVAN: ...To that of today. The skills that Biles is performing are, like, orders of magnitude more difficult than what they were doing back then. And so I think it's safe to say the greatest gymnast of all time, as you said in the intro. And there are some people who would argue the greatest athlete of all time in terms of, like, how dominant she is and how much longevity she's had.
Here's one person who believes that she's the best of all time, her teammate, Jordan Chiles, who last night after Biles won, pulled out this necklace that Simone put on and showed the cameras a diamond-encrusted goat, literally a goat, necklace. Here's what Simone Biles had to say about that.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SIMONE BILES: I was like, OK, if it goes well, we'll wear the goat necklace. I know people will go crazy over it. But at the end of the day, it is crazy that I am in the conversation of greatest of all athletes because I just still think I'm Simone Biles from Spring, Texas, that loves to flip.
FADEL: Oh, my God. She definitely should be wearing that goat necklace. What else are you looking forward to this weekend?
SULLIVAN: Well, so the track and field events begin today. And so one early highlight from that that I'm looking forward to is the women's 100-meter dash. And so here's a name you might recall. Sha'Carri Richardson...
FADEL: Yes.
SULLIVAN: ...Is going to be running in some heats for that today. Richardson is the fantastic and, like, very flamboyant and stylish, fun American runner...
FADEL: Loved her nails.
SULLIVAN: ...Who was forced out of the Tokyo Olympics. Exactly. She was forced out of the Tokyo Olympics due to a positive marijuana test. And she talked about it then. Her mom had just died. Marijuana is not a performance-improving drug. It's just against the rules. So that was a bummer that she had to pull out of that. But now she is finally here in Paris to make her Olympic debut, and I'm very excited to see it.
FADEL: That's awesome. NPR's Becky Sullivan in Paris. Thank you so much, Becky.
SULLIVAN: You're welcome.
(SOUNDBITE OF KAMASI WASHINGTON'S "LEROY AND LANISHA") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
