Simone Biles can’t be stopped. On Friday, the 26-year-old gymnastics star won her sixth all-around world championship gold medal to become the most decorated gymnast of all time. She now has 34 medals — across world championships and the Olympics — and was tied with Vitaly Scherbo, who won her medals in the 1900s.
“I was emotional because it was my first worlds here, 10 years ago, and then now my sixth one, so it’s crazy,” Biles said after the competition on the Peacock broadcast per PEOPLE. “But I swear, I do have something in my eye that’s been bothering me for like four hours and I cannot get it out.”
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Biles went on to talk about making an error while competing in the final rotation on the floor. “For some reason, I could not pick up my feet on my leaps, ’cause I actually kicked the ground in my [other] leap too,” Biles said after the final. “And then on that one, I just kicked the ground so bad and I just had to laugh at myself. I was like, am I supposed to do another leap? ‘Cause I don’t know the codes that well, I just do whatever I’m told. So I was like, I think I need to do another leap but I don’t have enough time, my music’s gonna run out.”
Biles finished with a score of 58.399. Her world title comes a little over a month after claiming her eighth national title which is also an all-time record. This also comes two years after Biles battled “Twisties” during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. She won two medals in Tokyo and now looks poised to make a run during the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
“I think we have to be a little bit more cautious about how we do things, so everything that we’re doing leading up to this next games or whatever is very intentional,” Biles said on the TODAY show. “So we’ve kind of been playing it on the down-low this time, making sure mentally and physically are both intact. So I think it’ll be different, but it’ll be good.” Biles has won seven Olympic medals, including four gold medals at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
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