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Posts tagged as “Nastia Liukin”

Gymnastics Champion Simone Biles to Carry Flag for Team USA in Rio Olympics Closing Ceremony

By goodblacknews on August 21, 2016

simone biles (on bar)
article via eurweb.com
In addition to her five gold medals, Simone Biles is now poised for another super Rio Olympics experience.  She’s been chosen as the Team USA flag bearer for closing ceremony on Sunday.
“It’s an incredible honor to be selected as the flag bearer by my Team USA teammates,” Biles said in a statement. “This experience has been the dream of a lifetime for me and my team and I consider it a privilege to represent my country, the United States Olympic Committee and USA Gymnastics by carrying our flag. I also wish to thank the city of Rio de Janeiro, and the entire country of Brazil, for hosting an incredible Games.”
This quite an honor for Miss Biles as she is only the second American gymnast to carry the flag in an opening or closing ceremony after Alfred Jochim in 1936.
Though it was largely expected given her dominance in the sport over the past three years, Biles’ competition here was a resounding success, reports USA Today Sports.

She led the Americans to a second consecutive team gold medal by an eye-popping eight points before winning the all-around title, gold medals on vault and floor exercise and bronze on balance beam.
Her five medals matches marks set by Nastia Liukin in 2008, Shannon Miller in 1992 and Mary Lou Retton in 1984.
Her success here only added to the consensus that she’s the best gymnast of her time and probably the best ever. None other than Bela and Martha Karolyi, Retton and Aimee Boorman, Biles’ longtime coach, think the case is clear.
Biles, 19, entered these Games as the three-time defending world all-around champion. Her 10 gold medals earned over that span is a record for any gymnast, and she has 14 total medals from world championship competition.

 
To read full article, go to: http://www.eurweb.com/2016/08/simone-biles-carry-us-flag-olympics-closing-ceremony-sunday/

U.S. Gymnastics Sensation Simone Biles Soars to Fourth Gold Medal in Rio Olympics

By goodblacknews on August 16, 2016

Simone Biles nailed her signature move, The Biles, to win the gold medal in the floor exercise. (Credit: Dmitri Lovetsky/Associated Press)

article by Victor Mather and Lela Moore via nytimes.com
RIO DE JANEIRO — For anyone who doubted her after a subpar performance on the balance beam, Simone Biles sent an emphatic message on Tuesday: She is unbeatable in the floor exercise.

Biles bounced back from a bronze medal performance on the beam to dominate the floor, completing her Rio Olympics with four gold medals and the bronze. She is the fourth American female gymnast to win five medals in a single Olympics, joining Mary Lou Retton (1984), Shannon Miller (1992) and Nastia Liukin (2008).

Biles scored a 15.966 in the floor, considered her best event.

Her signature floor move is the Biles, a double layout with a half-twist and a blind landing. She performed the move nearly perfectly, adding a stag leap, which she had left out of her performance in the team event but included in the individual all-around.

Her score dwarfed those of her competitors. Her teammate Aly Raisman won the silver medal with a routine slightly less difficult than Biles’s, sticking every landing on every tumbling pass. The bronze medal went to Amy Tinkler, the first female gymnast from Britain to compete in a floor final.

Raisman earned her sixth Olympic medal and her third at these Games. She won the team gold and the silver in the individual all-around, behind Biles, who also won the vault.

Tuesday’s victory put Biles in an exclusive club. Just three female gymnasts before her — Ecaterina Szabo of Romania (1984), Vera Caslavska of Czechoslovakia (1968) and Larisa Latynina of the Soviet Union (1956) — had also won four gold medals in one Olympics.

To read full article, go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/16/sports/olympics/rio-schedule-simone-biles-results.html

FEATURE: Atop the Gymnastics World, National Champion Simone Biles Can’t Suppress Her Grin

By goodblacknews on June 28, 2016

Simone Biles smiled nearly the whole way through her floor exercise on both days of the United States women’s gymnastics championships in St. Louis. (Credit: Jeff Roberson/Associated Press)

article by Juliet Macur via nytimes.com

ST. LOUIS — At the end of the United States women’s gymnastics championships here on Sunday night, so many gold medals hung around Simone Biles’s neck that when she walked, they clinked so loudly it made her giggle. A few times, she grabbed her medals to silence them and laughed yet again.

“I always have so much fun,” Biles said later, after she had won her fourth straight national title in the all-around event and gold medals in three of the four individual events. The last time a woman had won a fourth consecutive national title in the all-around was 42 years ago.

“People think you have to be serious to do a good job,” she said. “But I think if you’re having fun, you can do better. You can look back someday and say, wow, I had a good time instead of being so stressed out.”

That’s easier said than done in elite gymnastics, a sport that can be a dangerous endeavor. One slip could break bones or tear ligaments, or possibly something worse. But this happy-go-lucky attitude in a grueling, often solemn sport works for Biles, the three-time defending world champion in the all-around. And it makes perfect sense that it works.

After all, it’s fun to compete when you win and win and when the word around the sport is that you’re the best gymnast ever. Mary Lou Retton, the Olympic gold medalist in the all-around in 1984, has called Biles the top gymnast in history. Nastia Liukin, the Olympic gold medalist in 2008, has said that Biles is a lock for the gold medal at the Rio Games in August and that the real competition is for second place.

During the two-day national championships here, which were a warm-up for next month’s Olympic trials in San Jose, Calif., Martha Karolyi, the women’s national team coordinator, watched Biles’s routines closely — often with eyes opened extra wide.

After several of Biles’s big performances — and nearly all of them were big performances — Karolyi said, “Wow!” It was a substantial reaction from a woman who is the opposite of effusive: She gave two slow claps to Gabrielle Douglas’s floor exercise on Sunday, and Douglas is the reigning Olympic champion in the all-around.