Simone Biles has secured her second gold of the 2024 Paris Olympics.
The athlete, 27, continued her gymnastics comeback by earning the top score of the individual all-around final for women’s gymnastics on Thursday, August 1. Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade took home the silver medal, followed by Team USA’s Suni Lee with bronze.
Biles maintained a prominent lead throughout Thursday’s event, tailed closely by Andrade, 25. After initially falling behind, Lee, 21, managed to pull through with a strong floor routine. Biles secured her victory in the same skill, marking the last performance of the event.
Biles and Lee already won gold during the women’s gymnastics team event on Tuesday, July 30. They shared the victory with teammates Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey and Hezly Rivera. The win allowed Biles to officially surpass Shannon Miller as the most decorated American Olympic gymnast of all time.
Prior to the team competition, Biles suffered a calf injury during the all-around qualifiers on Sunday, July 28. However, she powered through to complete her events.
Biles celebrated the team win by posting an Instagram photo alongside her teammates as they cheered and held up the United States flag. “Lack of talent, lazy, Olympic champions,” she wrote, seemingly throwing shade at MyKayla Skinner with her caption.
Earlier in July, Skinner, 27, made headlines when she claimed in a YouTube video that the 2024 gymnastics team did not have the same “work ethic” as past Olympians. She alleged that the current group of athletes “don’t work as hard” or have the “talent or depth” of their predecessors.
Biles previously reacted to Skinner’s remarks via Threads, writing that “not everyone needs a mic and a platform.”
Skinner later apologized for her statements, claiming that she was “misinterpreted” and “misunderstood.”
“A lot of the stuff I was talking about wasn’t always necessarily about the current team because I love and support all the girls that made it and I’m so proud of them,” Skinner explained in a July Instagram Story. “It was more about going back into my own gym and the work ethic is different compared to when we were doing gymnastics in the Marta [Karolyi] era.”
On Wednesday, July 31, Biles revealed via X that Skinner had blocked her on social media. Chiles, 23, shared proof via her Instagram Story, taking a photo of Skinner’s blank Instagram profile on Biles’ phone. “When she blocks Simone,” Chiles captioned the pic.
Before the Paris Olympics, Biles won four gold medals and one bronze medal in Rio in 2016 as well as one silver and one bronze medal in Tokyo in 2021. She was forced to withdraw from several events in Tokyo after suffering from the “twisties,” which caused her to become disoriented in the air while competing.
In a July interview with the Today show’s Hoda Kotb, Biles described the Paris Olympics as a “redemption tour” for her and her teammates, adding, “In Tokyo, we all didn’t have our best performances, so we’re excited to go out there and kill it.”
