The U.S. Women’s Gymnastics team asserted their ongoing dominance at the world championships in Qatar on Tuesday, winning by as astounding 8.766 points to bring home gold for the the USA.
Simone Biles had a kidney stone and still led the U.S. to a world championship
This was an iconic performance.
Photo by Francois Nel/Getty Images
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
The victory means the women’s team has automatically punched their ticket to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, though there was never any doubt the team would be competing. But there was so much more to the team’s win than just domination and a guaranteed Olympic berth.
Simone Biles destroyed everyone — even with a kidney stone.
Biles was forced to visit an emergency room in Doha during the competition after complaining of abdominal pain over the weekend. Initially believed to appendicitis, scans found a large kidney stone which caused her considerable pain. Biles didn’t pass the stone, and left hospital — still competing despite the pain.
“We had to go to the ER, because I’ve been having stomach pains on my right side for two days,” Biles said at the weekend. “We started to think it was my appendix, so we wanted to go as a precaution. We got tests done and they found a kidney stone. I’m in a bit of pain [today], so adrenaline helps.”
Biles went on to score a 15.500 on the vault, and dominate every apparatus she competed on, which of course was all of them. The only event she didn’t finish first in was the uneven bars, where she qualified second.
People are calling the kidney stone “the Doha jewel,” which is a little creepy — but denotes how iconic Biles has become.
The team’s win was historic.
It was the largest margin of victory in modern gymnastics, besting the previous record the Fab Five set in 2016 in the lead up to the Rio Olympics.
No team has won by as a large a margin as the U.S. Women’s Gymnastics team did since scoring changed 12 years ago.
Biles had a vault named after her.
The list of gymnasts who have had vaults named after them is few and far between. Only 22 named vaults have been added to the official code of points, and nobody since Cheng Fai at the 2005 World Championship created the “Cheng.”
“The Biles” is a Cheng with an additional half-twist, which could make it the most-difficult vault to complete in women’s gymnastics, depending on how it’s ruled on degree of difficulty. It’s a round-off, flic-flac with half-turn on, stretched salto forward with double twist off.
And there’s more to come.
Biles will compete in the apparatus finals and the women’s all-around title starting Thursday. With a week that’s already been this iconic we can only imagine where this will go.
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