Simone Biles is far from pleased with her performance despite the victory.<\/b>
\nDOHA, Qatar \u2014 Simone Biles attempted to smile but her eyes betrayed her. She was angry, paying little attention to the gold medal around her neck, the one that made history.
Yes, winning never gets old. It\u2019s just not why she does this.
The challenge whenever the greatest gymnast of her and any other generation steps onto the floor isn\u2019t to impress the judges so much as meet her own impossibly high standards. The one that keeps nudging the 21-year-old to propel herself and her sport forward.
And for two hours Thursday, for the first time in a long time, the momentum slowed. At least in the eyes of Biles, who didn\u2019t sound like someone who just became the first woman to win four world all-around championships, a feat she pulled off despite a handful of errors to beat Mai Murakami of Japan and her American teammate, Morgan Hurd, by more than 1.6 points.
It\u2019s a sizable margin for nearly everyone else, but not for Biles. Contending with a kidney stone she insists is manageable, she sat down her vault in the first rotation, came off the beam on her third and stepped out of bounds on floor exercise.
\u201cIt\u2019s not the gymnast that I am, to go out there and kind of bomb a meet like this,\u201d said Biles after posting an all-around score of 57.491. \u201cEven though I won, I wish it were a little bit different.\u201d
Only it wasn\u2019t, a testament to the massive difficulty Biles packs into each event. What she\u2019s doing on floor exercise is as hard as anything the men can come up with. The vault \u2013 the one that will carry her name when code of points is updated \u2013 is so tough no other woman even attempts it in competition.
Doing anything else would be \u201cboring\u201d as her coach Laurent Landi put it. Yet Biles doesn\u2019t use the remarkably high start values of her routines as an excuse when she doesn\u2019t hit them. There\u2019s no grading on a curve, at least not for her.
Biles jokingly asked Landi if she needed an 18 \u2013 a score not currently possible in gymnastics \u2013 heading into her floor exercise to catch Murakami. The deficit was actually 13.308 points, totally doable. Biles briefly thought about toning down her boundary pushing set for something a bit easier just to make sure she won. The internal wavering was fleeting.
\u201cI would never,\u201d Biles said.
Playing it safe simply isn\u2019t her style. While her right foot did slip into the red out of bounds during her first tumbling pass, it hardly mattered. Her score of 15.000 was more than enough to rocket past Murakami and Hurd, the 2017 world champion.
\u201cIt\u2019s absolutely insane she fell twice and won,\u201d Hurd said. \u201cI have no words.\u201d
Neither did Biles, at least not any positive ones.
\u201cIt just (stinks) that I did so bad and I still won,\u201d said Biles. \u201cI wish it could not happen. You have to earn it and I\u2019m not sure I earned it tonight.\u201d
Send questions\/comments to the editors.<\/p>\n

\n

Similarity rank: 6.7<\/div>\n

Sentiment rank: 0.9<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

TW posts: 3<\/div>\n

TW reposts: 0<\/div>\n

TW likes: 2<\/div>\n

TW sentiment: 10<\/div>\n<\/div>\n