Simone Biles Soars to a Record Seventh U.S. Championship

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Simone Biles propelling herself twice her height in the air and … she sticks it! The 24-year-old won her record seventh U.S. title on Sunday night at the United States Gymnastics Championships in Texas, without even throwing her Yurchenko double pike on vault, a move so difficult no one else will attempt it. Instead, she went for two vaults with a slightly lower difficulty and did so with apparent ease. In the end, Biles won three of the four apparatuses — vault, beam, and floor— and took home the all-around with a 4.7-point margin. She was third in bars. Biles has won the all-around in every national championship she’s competed in since 2013, more than any other woman in history. In her floor routine, which contains two eponymous skills, she stepped out of bounds three times on day one, but only once on day two. “It’s so crazy because in training I never go out of bounds and I never have this much power,” Biles told reporters, per ESPN. “But with the adrenaline, that’s where it comes.” Imagine being too powerful … Biles is expected to bring back her Yurchenko double pike at the Olympic trials later this month and at the Tokyo Games, where she’ll attempt to become the first woman to win back-to-back Olympic all-around gold in over 50 years.