On Thursday, Simone Biles won Olympics gold yet again in the women's gymnastics all-around final from Paris. Biles had to overcome a slow start in which she made a major mistake on the bars but worked her way back to the top of the leaderboard with her performances over the ensuing events, ultimately winding up with the Olympics gold medal once again.
One person who was amazed by Biles' performance was none other than fellow Olympics gold medalist and Los Angeles Lakers icon Magic Johnson, who took to X, formerly Twitter, to extend his congratulations and reminisce about an old meeting between the two.
“It’s truly amazing that in 2017, I sat with Simone and her parents in the gym they own in Houston discussing her first Olympic all-around gold medal in Rio (2016), and she’s just won again today in 2024! I’m looking forward to seeing how the most decorated olympic gymnast continues to create history in the individual events this week,” wrote Johnson in his post.
Additionally, Suni Lee took home the bronze medal for the Americans.
A historic legacy
The win cements Biles as the oldest all-around Olympics champion since 1952 at the age of 27, per USA Today. It is her ninth gold medal overall and her second of these Olympics, in addition to a team win for Team USA earlier in the week.
Biles began her Olympics career at the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, where she took the gymnastics world by storm (if she hadn't already done so with her string of world championship wins in the years prior to that). She took home four gold medals that year and quickly became a superstar back home in America and abroad.
“It is crazy I am in the conversation of the greatest of all time,” Biles said, per USA Today. “I just think I’m still Simone Biles from Spring, Texas, who loves to flip.”
All of this comes on the heels of Biles exiting the previous Olympics in Tokyo due to feeling instable on the beams, causing her to be concerned for her safety. However, evidently, that case of the “yips,” an unexplainable psychological phenomenon that athletes sometimes are forced to confront, has evidently subsided in the years since.
In any case, upcoming events for Biles in Paris include the balance beam, floor exercise, and vault, which means she can add three more gold medals to her total before returning to the United States.
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