DOHA (Qatar) • Simone Biles became the most decorated female gymnast in the history of the world championships on Saturday after winning a gold medal in the floor exercise to add to her bronze in the balance beam earlier in the day.
She finished the week with four golds, standing atop the podium as well in the team final, the all-around and the vault, and adding a silver in the uneven bars to lift her career haul to 20 and matching Russian Svetlana Khorkina's mark.
Suffering from kidney-stone problems that briefly sent her to a hospital emergency room before qualifying, Biles became the first American to earn a medal in every event and the first woman of any nationality since Romania's Daniela Silivas at the 1988 Olympics.
"There's a lot to be proud, but I'm most proud of that I'm here, I made all the event finals, medalled in all events and I survived," she said.
"I'm really happy to be done. Proud of my performances here. I wish some of them would have been better, but I'm really proud of the outcome."
Biles also sounded a warning to the rest of the competition that she is just getting started, but first plans to treat the kidney stone before going on a short holiday, which will put her in the right frame of mind for next year.
"Hopefully, I feel more confident going into all of the events. We'll see about upgrades," she added.
The 21-year-old finished a busy 10 days by drilling her floor routine, which includes intricate tumbling runs that are as difficult as anything done by the men these days.
Though she stepped out of bounds on her third pass, her score of 14.933 was a full point better than that of teammate Morgan Hurd, who earned her third medal of the meet, while Japan's Mai Murakami was third.
While allowing it was not a flawless display, Biles took to Twitter afterwards to chastise her critics in a move she felt was necessary.
"It's upsetting whenever I see all the tweets after I do performances of how disappointed they are in me," she said. "It's not fair because they can't set expectations on me. I have to set them for myself."
And no one's expectations are higher. Biles took herself to task after the all-around, unhappy with a series of uncharacteristic mistakes.
She vowed to redeem herself in the event finals and responded by reaching the podium on each event.
Elsewhere, five-time US champion and two-time Olympian Sam Mikulak also picked up the first world medal of his career when he finished third in the high bar behind Epke Zonderland of the Netherlands and Japan's Kohei Uchimura, who boosted his career world medals to 21.
THE GUARDIAN
