Simone Biles didn’t just all-around win gold, she dominated in unprecedented fashion

As expected, Simone Biles took home gold in the women’s individual all-around. Once again, she put on a fantastic display of talent. It’s a credit to how good she is that going into the event there was less anxiety about whether she could do it and more appreciation to just sit back and watch greatness.

It wasn’t just that she won, it was that Biles dominated on the way to gold. Historically, the women’s individual all-around is an extremely tight battle for gold. It’s usually fractions of a point separating gold from silver. Not with Biles; she cruised to a 2.1 point victory. Ben Cohen of the Wall Street Journal put Biles’ domination into proper perspective.

Prior to Biles, no woman had won the event by a full point or more since Věra Čáslavská won by 1.4 points in 1968. The last 11 winners before this year had each won by 0.6 points or less.

The scoring system and structure of the event has changed significantly over the years, but even that just makes Biles’ performance look even more impressive. If you take the winner margin as a percentage of the points ahead of the silver medalist, Biles’ greatness shows through even more.

Biles scored 3.38 percent more points than anyone in the field. While that might not seem like much, it’s nearly double the margin any other gold medal winner has posted in the event. Many struggle to win by more than a tenth of a percent.

If there was any question whether Biles was the greatest ever, she erased that doubt and cemented her place at the top in Rio.