STUTTGART: Everyone counts Simone Biles’ medals except Simone Biles.

Winning her 24th and 25th world championship medals in beam and floor on Sunday put the United States gymnast top of the all-time medal charts for the championships.

Biles won five gold medals this week. If she can repeat that at next year’s Olympics it would be a feat no female gymnast has managed at a single Games.

But for Biles, it’s not about the statistics.

“I can’t be more thrilled with the performance that I put out at this world championships,” she said. The medal record? “I’m not a number person.” Aged 22, she’s a hero to younger gymnasts who grew up watching her routines.

“I’m second in the world after Simone Biles, and she’s obviously so amazing. And to be second is super crazy,” the 16-year-old US gymnast Sunisa Lee said after taking silver behind Biles in Sunday’s floor exercise. “I don’t know how she’s been doing this for so long.”

Biles’ 24th medal came on the beam, breaking a tie for 23 with Belarusian gymnast Vitaly Scherbo.

Biles scored 15.066 after a near-flawless routine, opting for a simpler dismount than the double-double she performed earlier in the championships.

That dismount is a sore point for Biles, who introduced the double-double to competition this season and had the skill officially named after her at the worlds there are four Biles skills now. She feels the International Gymnastics Federation didn’t reward it with a high enough difficulty rating.

“It’s not worth the one-tenth [extra difficulty point]. I’m sorry, it’s just not,” she said.

When her score was announced, guaranteeing the medal record, Biles leaped up from her seat with a broad smile and punched the air.

“I was really excited. I thought it was going to be at least a 14.8, 14.9, but to see 15, I was like, ‘Well, that’s pretty crazy,’ so I was very proud,” she said.

China took silver and bronze with Liu Tingting on 14.433 and Li Shijia on 14.3, respectively.

Biles won the floor exercise by a full point, scoring 15.133 despite a step out of bounds on one pass, and blew kisses to the audience after finishing her routine. Her US teammate Lee won silver, her third medal of the championships, while Angelina Melnikova took bronze for Russia.

Biles’ winning routine came after a long wait when Brazilian gymnast Flavia Saraiva requested an inquiry into her score, during which time Biles sat on the edge of the floor.

Her earlier gold medals came in the team event on Tuesday, the individual all-around on Thursday and the vault on Saturday.

A fifth place on uneven bars on Saturday ended Biles’ chances of winning a medal in all six events, which she did last year in her comeback world championships after a sabbatical in 2017.

The uneven bars are historically Biles’ weakest event, though she still won a world silver in 2018, and two-time world champion Nina Derwael of Belgium is the strongest contender to stop a gold-medal sweep by Biles and the US women’s team at the Olympics.

Biles hasn’t confirmed whether she’ll continue to compete after next year’s Olympics, so this week may have been her last at the world championships. Blowing kisses to the crowd wasn’t meant as a goodbye to the competition, she said.

“It’s just a good floor routine, farewell to just the end of this world championship chapter here in Stuttgart,” she said.

Of her 25 career world medals, 19 are gold, against 12 of 23 for Scherbo.

Russia’s Nikita Nagornyy also stood out as one to watch in Tokyo next year by completing a hat-trick of gold medals, adding the men’s vault title Sunday to his all-around and team success.

The 22-year-old finished just ahead of team-mate Artur Dalaloyan by 0.033 points in a repeat of Friday’s all-around final where Nagornyy took gold and Dalaloyan, the men’s 2018 world champion, silver.

Dalaloyan also took bronze on the horizontal bar, behind Brazilian gold medallist Arthur Mariano, for his fourth medal this week, completing the set after an all-around silver and team gold.

Joe Fraser, the youngest competitor in the parallel bars field, said it was a “dream come true” to win Britain’s second gold medal in Stuttgart.

Less than 24 hours after Max Whitlock’s pommel horse gold, Fraser pipped Turkey’s Ahmet Onder on the bars by 0.017 points.

“World champion? It doesn’t get better,” said Fraser.

Published in Dawn, October 15th, 2019