Simone Biles wins record 13th world title, completes medal set

By Nick ZaccardiNov 2, 2018, 12:40 PM EDT

Simone Biles is the most decorated world champion in gymnastics history. And the only American to earn world medals in every event.

Biles earned her first world title on vault and her first world medal (silver) on the uneven bars on Friday, checking off two of the (relatively) biggest holes on her résumé. They came exactly one year after the four-time Rio Olympic champ returned to training following a 14-month break.

Biles, unable to pass a large kidney stone in Doha, passed retired Belarusian Vitaly Scherbo for most career world titles with her 13th gold.

Biles cruised to it on vault — after two silvers and a bronze in previous years — despite taking out difficulty. She chose not to perform her signature vault, the one she sat down in Thursday’s all-around final.

“You can’t change what happened yesterday,” Biles said of one of her two falls in Thursday’s all-around, which she still won convincingly due to her huge edge in difficulty.

She took out a half-twist, and though Biles had a big step on the landing, she still scored 15.266. She nailed an Amanar on her second vault for a 15.466. None of the other seven finalists cracked 15 points on either vault.

Also in the vault final, 43-year-old Oksana Chusovitina finished fourth, missing a medal by .208. The Uzbek who debuted at worlds for the Soviet Union in 1991 already holds the Olympic record of seven gymnastics appearances. At Tokyo 2020, she can become the oldest Olympic gymnast in 100 years.

An hour and leotard change later, Biles took second to Belgian Nina Derwael on bars, five tenths behind. Biles was 14th on bars in Rio and had previously made one bars final at worlds, finishing fourth in 2013.

“[2013] is when I wanted to chainsaw every bar in the country and the world,” Biles told media in Doha.

When she returned to training last year under a new coach known for his bars workers, Laurent Landi, Biles set out to improve her weakest event. What if you had told her then that she would put in the work necessary to become a world medalist in 365 days?

“I would have probably said I’m quitting,” she said, laughing. “To even work and put that much effort into bars, I probably would have been like, no, no thank you.”

If Biles earns medals on balance beam and floor exercise Saturday, she will become the first woman to make the podium in every event at worlds since Soviet Yelena Shushunova in 1987. She would also tie retired Russian Svetlana Khorkina for the most world medals for a woman with 20.

GYM WORLDS: Full Results | TV Schedule

In other events, two-time Olympian Sam Mikulak‘s bid for a first individual Olympic or world medal was foiled yet again. Mikulak, a five-time U.S. all-around champion, finished fourth on pommel horse and seventh on floor exercise.

On Wednesday, Mikulak was in third place going into the last rotation of the all-around, erred and dropped to fifth. He also finished fourth in high bar finals at the 2013 Worlds and 2016 Olympics. Mikulak has two more medal chances Saturday on parallel bars and high bar.

The pommel horse title came down to a tiebreaker. Xiao Ruoteng, who on Wednesday lost his all-around repeat bid via tiebreak, this time took gold over Olympic champion Max Whitlock of Great Britain, though both had the same score of 15.166. Xiao had a higher execution score, keeping Whitlock from a third world title on the event.

Russian Artur Dalaloyan added floor gold to his all-around title from Wednesday. Dalaloyan unseated three-time world champion Kenzo Shirai with a 14.9-point routine, despite having six fewer tenths of difficulty. Shirai scored 14.866.

Carlos Yulo earned the Philippines’ first gymnastics worlds medal, a bronze, .034 ahead of fourth-place Yul Moldauer. Moldauer, the 2017 U.S. all-around champion, earned floor bronze last year.

Greek Eleftherios Petrounias put off shoulder surgery to win his fourth straight Olympic or world title on still rings, beating 2012 Olympic champ Arthur Zanetti by .266.

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Mikaela Shiffrin finishes World Cup with one more win, two more records and a revelation

By OlympicTalkMar 21, 2023, 12:00 PM EDT

Mikaela Shiffrin finished a season defined by records with two more.

Shiffrin won the World Cup Finals giant slalom on the final day of the campaign, breaking her ties for the most career women’s giant slalom wins and most career podiums across all women’s World Cup races.

Shiffrin earned her record-extending 88th career World Cup victory, prevailing by six hundredths over Thea Louise Stjernesund of Norway combining times from two runs in Andorra on Sunday.

An encore of Shiffrin’s record-breaking 87th World Cup win airs on NBC next Sunday from 12-1 p.m. ET.

ALPINE SKIING WORLD CUP: Full Results

She won her 21st career GS, breaking her tie for the most all-time on the women’s World Cup with Vreni Schneider, a Swiss star of the 1980s and ’90s.

She made her 138th career World Cup podium across all events, breaking her tie for the most all-time on the women’s World Cup with Lindsey Vonn. Shiffrin earned her 138th podium in her 249th start, meaning she has finished in the top three in 55 percent of her World Cup races dating to her debut at age 15 in 2011.

Earlier this season, Shiffrin passed Vonn and then Ingemar Stenmark, a Swede of the 1970s and ’80s, for the most career Alpine skiing World Cup victories. She won 14 times from November through March, her second-best season after her record 17-win campaign of 2018-19.

In those years in between, Shiffrin endured the most difficult times of her life, was supplanted as the world’s top slalom skier and questioned her skiing like never before.

On Saturday afternoon, Shiffrin was asked what made the difference this fall and winter. There were multiple factors. She detailed one important one.

“I had a lot of problems with my memory,” she said in a press conference. “Not this season, so much, but last season and the season before that. I couldn’t remember courses. And when I was kind of going through this, I couldn’t keep mental energy for the second runs.”

Pre-race course inspection and the ability to retain that knowledge for a minute-long run over an hour later is integral to success in ski racing. Shiffrin is so meticulous and methodical in her training, historically prioritizing it over racing in her junior days, that inspection would seem to fit into her all-world preparation.

She didn’t understand how she lost that ability until she began working with a new sports psychologist last summer.

“That was a little bit like less focus on sports psychology and more focus on, like, psychology psychology and a little bit more grief counseling style,” she said. “Explaining what was actually going on in my brain, like chemical changes in the brain because of trauma. Not just grief, but actually the traumatic experience itself of knowing what happened to my dad, seeing him in the hospital, touching him after he was dead. Those are things that you can’t get out of your head. It had an impact. Clearly, it still does.”

Shiffrin had a “weird a-ha moment” after her first course inspection this season in November in Finland.

“I didn’t take that long to inspect, and I remembered the whole course,” she said. “Oh my gosh, I was like coming out of a cloud that I had been in for over two years.”

What followed was a win, of course, and a season that approached Shiffrin’s unrivaled 2018-19. Fourteen wins in 31 World Cup starts, her busiest season ever, and bagging the season titles in the overall, slalom and GS in runaways.

“After last season, I didn’t feel like I could get to a level with my skiing again where it was actually contending for the slalom globe,” she said. “And GS, I actually had a little bit more hope for, but then at the beginning of the season, I kind of counted myself out.

“I feel like my highest level of skiing has been higher than the previous couple of seasons, maybe higher than my whole career. My average level of skiing has been also higher than previous seasons, and my lowest level of skiing has also been higher.”

There are other reasons for the revival of dominance, though Shiffrin was also the world’s best skier last season (Olympics aside). She went out of her way on Saturday afternoon to credit her head coach of seven years, Mike Day, who left the team during the world championships after he was told he would not be retained for next season.

“He is as much a part of the success this entire season as he’s ever been,” said Shiffrin, who parted with Day to bring aboard Karin Harjo, the first woman to be her head coach as a pro.

Shiffrin’s greatest success this season began around the time she watched a a mid-December chairlift interview between retired Liechtenstein skier Tina Weirather and Italian Sofia Goggia, the world’s top downhiller. Goggia spoke about her disdain for mediocrity.

“Ever since then, pretty much every time I put on my skis, I’m like, ‘OK, don’t be mediocre today,’” Shiffrin said in January.

During the highest highs of this season, Shiffrin felt like she did in 2018-19.

“It is mind-boggling to me to be in a position again where I got to feel that kind of momentum through a season because after that [2018-19] season, I was like, this is never going to happen again, and my best days of my career are really behind me, which it was kind of sad to feel that at this point four years ago,” said Shiffrin, who turned 28 years old last week. “This season, if anything, it just proved that, take 17 wins [from 2018-19] aside or the records or all those things, it’s still possible to feel that kind of momentum.”

After one last victory Sunday, Shiffrin sat in the winner’s chair with another crystal globe and took questions from an interviewer. It was her boyfriend, Norwegian Alpine skier Aleksander Aamodt Kilde.

“Excited to come back and do it again next year,” she replied to one question.

“Yeah,” he wittily replied. “You will.”

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Russia ban runs through Olympic gymnastics team qualifying deadline

By Nick ZaccardiMar 21, 2023, 11:06 AM EDT

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Russia’s ban from international sport extended long enough that, as rules stand, its gymnasts cannot qualify to defend Olympic men’s and women’s team titles at the 2024 Paris Games, even if they are reinstated to compete elsewhere before the Games start.

Should the ban be lifted in time, they can still qualify for the Paris Games to compete in individual events.

Gymnasts from Russia, and other European nations not already qualified, need to compete at next month’s European Championships to stay on the path toward Olympic qualification in the men’s and women’s team events.

Earlier this month, the European Gymnastics Federation was asked by what date must bans on Russian athletes be lifted for them to be eligible to compete at the European Championships.

“According to our rules, changes can be made until the draw,” the federation’s head of media wrote in a March 8 email.

The draw for the European Championships was held Tuesday. Russian gymnasts, who are still banned from international competition for the war in Ukraine, were not included in the draw.

The 2024 Olympic team event fields will be filled by the top finishers at this fall’s world championships, plus the medalists from last year’s worlds. Teams can only qualify for worlds via continental championships, such as the European Championships, or the previous year’s world championships.

The International Gymnastics Federation, whose Olympic qualifying rules were published by the IOC last April, was asked if there is any other way that gymnasts from Russia could qualify for the Olympic team events. It responded by forwarding a March 3 press release that stated that Russia and Belarus gymnasts remain banned “until further notice.”

Russia’s gymnastics federation has not responded to a Monday morning request for comment.

Last December, the IOC said it planned to explore a possibility that Russian and Belarusian athletes could enter Asian competitions if and when they are reinstated. There have been no further updates on that front. The Asian Gymnastics Championships are in June.

In Tokyo, Russian women, competing as the Russian Olympic Committee rather than Russia due to the nation’s doping violations, won the team title over the heavily favored U.S. after Simone Biles withdrew after her opening vault with the twisties. It marked the first Olympic women’s team title for Russian gymnasts since the Soviet Union broke up.

At last year’s worlds, the U.S. won the women’s team title in the absence of the banned Russians.

Russian men won the Tokyo Olympic team title by 103 thousandths of a point over Japan, their first gold in the event since the 1996 Atlanta Games.

China won last year’s world men’s team title over Japan and Great Britain.

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