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UPDATE: Spring's Simone Biles repeats world champion all-around gymnastics title

By: WOL Sports Staff
| Published 10/08/2014

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UPDATE:

USA previously won team gold at 2014 World Gymnastics Championships.


Simone Biles of Spring, Texas, repeated her World Champion individual all-around title Friday, October 10, at the 2014 World Gymnastics Championships in Nanning, China, adding more gold to her coffers. Romania’s Larisa Iordache won the silver medal, and USA teammate, Kyla Ross, took the bronze medal, giving Team USA a 1-3 finish.

Biles, just 17, lead from start to finish, and joins Shannon Miller (1993 and 1994) as the only other American woman to accomplish the feat, and the first African-American. Only one other woman has repeated the world championship all-around, Svetlana Khorkina of Russia in 2001 and 2003.

Biles was the last competitor to perform the floor exercise in the fourth rotation. She needed a 14.600 to secure first place; she scored 15.066, ending up with a 60.231 final score for all the events. Lordache finished with a 59.765 total score. Biles had the best scores in both the floor exercise, and the vault with a 15.866.

The second all-around medal makes the sixth world championships medal for the Spring, Texas, resident., Her previous medals include the all-around and floor exercise titles at the 2013 World Championships. She also won the silver medal on vault, and the bronze on the balance beam. Biles began competing at the international senior level just last year and made USA team for the 2013 World Championships.

Kyla Ross is the youngest member of the U.S. Olympic team that won a gold medal at the 2012 Games in London. This was her fifth world championship medal. She previously won silvers in the all-around, uneven bars and balance beam in 2013, in addition to her team gold at this year’s World Gymnastics Championships.

Ross, born in Honolulu and now a California resident, was second behind her Biles, but slipped to fifth after the second rotation. Heading into the final rotation, she trailed China’s Yao Jinnan, who was in third place, by more than three-tenths of a point, and Russia’s Aliya Mustafina, who was fourth, by nearly two-tenths. Both scored low on the last apparatus, and Ross ended with a total score of 58.232, ahead of Mustafina with 57.915, and Yao with 57.465.

Team USA is well-positioned to take home plenty of gold at the next Summer Olympics in 2016. Rio de Janeiro , Brazil, will be the host country. The Olympics are scheduled for August 5-21, 2016.

ORIGINAL STORY:

SPRING, Texas -- The United States women’s gymnastics team continues to dominate the world, doing so at the World Championships by an even greater margin than in did in the 2011 World Championships, and the 2012 Olympics. In fact, it’s the largest women’s team margin of victory at a World Championships or Olympics since the new scoring system was implemented in 2006.

The women’s team consisting of Simone Biles, Kyla Ross, Alyssa Baumann, Madison Kocian, Ashton Locklear, and MyKayla Skinner, combined for 179.28 points, 6.693 better than the silver medalist team from China, the host country. Russia, which finished second to the U.S. in 2011 and 2012, came in third in this year’s championships.

In the 2011 World Championships the U.S. won by 4.082; the 2012 Olympics were won by 5.066...the previous record.

Simone Biles and Kyla Ross will participate in the women’s all-around finals Friday, October 10. Biles, who hails from Spring, Texas, will try to become the first woman to win back-to-back World titles since Russian Svetlana Khorkina in 2001 and 2003.

With two fewer apparatuses than the men, Biles can win five medals if she repeats in finals, with the same scores as her qualifying scores, in fact, she will win five gold medals, which has never been done by a woman at a single World Championships.

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