The gymnastics legend has won her 8th championship 10 years after she first ascended to the top of her sport as a teenage prodigy.
It's been 10 years since Simone Biles captured her first world title in 2013, and the gymnastics star is still on top.
On Sunday, the 26-year-old newlywed earned her eighth U.S. Championship, posting an all-around two-day total of 118.40, four points clear of runner-up Shilese Jones. Florida junior Leanne Wong claimed third, bolstering her chances of making a third straight world championship team.
The win makes Biles the oldest woman to win a national title since USA Gymnastics began organizing the event in 1963. It also breaks her tie with Alfred Jochim, who won seven titles between 1925-33, when the Amateur Athletics Union ran the championships and the events in men's competition included rope climbing.
"Every time I come out here, I feel like I'm in a fever dream," Biles told ESPN after the meet. "I feel like nothing's real. I knew I did a good floor routine, but as soon as I got off and saw the score, I was like, 'Damn, I need to see that routine.' Because I wasn't sure. I'm in the moment. But it doesn't feel real for some reason. I just, seriously, can't believe I'm out here competing again. I'm proud of myself for that."
Per the outlet, Biles is approaching her run-up to the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, France, differently than she did the lead-up to the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. Rather than allowing media and fans into her preparations ahead of competitions, Biles is keeping her cards close to her chest. She has yet to publicly confirm whether or not she even plans to compete in the Paris games.
She's also playing it relatively safe -- by her standards. After tweaking her right ankle in training on Saturday, Biles and her coach, Laurent Landi, opted out of doing the Yurchenko double pike vault that she nailed opening night of the competition on Friday.
But Biles is a notably different person than she was two years ago.
In 2021, she shocked the world when she made the difficult decision to withdraw herself from the team competition, the all-around and the majority of her individual events for her own mental health. After coming down with a case of what gymnasts refer to as "the twisties," which causes them to lose their position in the air on complex jumps and can lead to devastating injury, Biles thought it safer to step aside and support her teammates from the sidelines.
Later that year, she told ET that she received an "overwhelming amount of love and support of outreach of fans, family."
"I'm just very blessed to still be in this position and to have so many people reaching out, showing love and respect for me," she said. "It shines a whole new light on the sport and ourselves as not just an athlete, but as a human."
But the athlete was far from idle in her time away from competition. She tied the knot with NFL star Jonathan Owens this spring, not once but twice -- first in an intimate city hall ceremony and then in a lavish fairy-tale ceremony in Mexico.
She and her husband are making long-distance work while she trains in their home of Houston and he plays for the Green Bay Packers.
The next stop is Antwerp in late September, where Biles will work to add to the 25 medals -- 18 of them gold -- that she's already earned thus far in her history-making career.
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