t had just turned 20 minutes past eight when Simone Biles stepped out on to the floor for her final routine. The centre of the arena was quiet and still, every other apparatus vacant. She had the place to herself and the undivided ­attention of every single person there.

Zinedine Zidane was watching, so was Steph Curry, Tony Hawk and Nadia Comaneci, four of the finest athletes of the past hundred years, all come along to see another of them. Like Comaneci said in a live interview on the big screen at the beginning of the session: “Everyone’s here to see the amazing Simone Biles.” She waited a beat then added: “And 23 other gymnasts.”

With Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps gone, Biles is the last of the great Olympic stars of the 21st ­century who is still competing in the Games. She is the biggest draw here, the one athlete who can persuade people who do not much like or care for sport to switch on and watch the best to ever do it.

What they got was something even rarer again; a contest between Biles and the second-best gymnast in the world, her heir apparent, Rebeca Andrade from Brazil. For years, ­everyone else has been competing for second. Biles has not lost an all-around competition since 2013, when she was beaten by her US teammate, Kyla Ross, at the 2013 Chemnitz Friendly. But for the first time in a long time, one of her competitors had a real chance of beating her. Andrade, 25, who won the silver in this event in 2021, and has been closing in on Biles’s scores ever since.

Andrade beat her in the vault at the world championships last year. Biles even passed her a pretend crown when they stood on the podium afterwards. Almost everyone, even Andrade’s own coaches, agree that she has not caught her yet. When they are both at their very best, Biles wins. But she could not afford to make too many mistakes: a slip here or a ­stumble there and Andrade would be waiting to overtake her.

And it nearly happened. On the uneven bars, which has always been Biles’s weakest apparatus, she flew too high on a transition and had to bend her knees to avoid hitting the mat as she grasped the low bar. She recovered brilliantly and stuck the landing of a spectacular dismount with a double twist, double backflip. But the way she swore as she walked across the floor to her coach told you everything about what had happened. She scored a lowly 13.733, and dropped into third place behind Andrade and Algeria’s Kaylia Nemour.

“At that point,” Biles said afterwards, “I’m not sure what I was doing, but praying to every single god out there.”

From then on, Biles had no margin of error left. “I’ve never been so stressed!” she said, “thank you Rebeca!” She needed to be near perfect. And she was. There was barely so much as a wobble on the balance beam and her score of 14.566 was enough to put her back into the lead before the final rotation.

Andrade scored 14.033 on the floor, which meant Biles needed at least 13.868 to win. It was in doubt for as long as it took to land her first spectacular triple-double tumble and the minute her feet hit the floor you just knew what was going to happen.

Biles won the gold by 1.199 points, At 27, she is the oldest woman to take the all-around title in more 70 years, the third to win two of them and the first to do it in Games that were not back-to-back.

Her US teammate Sunisa Lee claimed the bronze medal, while the British duo of Alice Kinsella and Georgia-Mae Fenton improved on their qualifying positions, finishing in 12th and 18th respectively.

“I’m tired,” Biles said with a big grin. “Rebeca’s way too close. I’ve never had an athlete that close and it definitely put me on my toes. It brought out the best athlete in me, but mmm-hmm, I don’t like it guys, I was stressing out out there.”

It was good to see her laughing about it all as she spoke. It was not so long ago Biles thought she was done with her sport after she came down with that case of the twisties in Tokyo.

“Three years ago, I never thought I would step foot on the gymnastics floor again, just because of everything that had happened,” she said. “Before Tokyo, I was so nervous about getting injured that I neglected my mental health and that meant I ended up getting injured. It was a mental injury and that was almost harder than it being a physical injury, because with a physical injury the doctor can tell you ‘it will be three to six weeks’ or ‘three to six months’ but with a mental injury you can only say ‘time will tell’.”

She has been in therapy since then and was again on the morning of the final, just like she is “every Thursday”.

Biles’s willingness to talk openly about what she has come through to compete here has changed her sport, maybe more than any of the eponymous tricks she has developed and perfected over the years.

Asked if she had a last message, Biles, who was now wearing a diamond necklace in the shape of a goat, said: “Keep your head on straight, have fun, and dream big.” And remember, she added later: “It’s not over till it’s over.”

Simone Biles said her gold medal Olympic victory in the all-around final on Thursday was her most stressful – because of the pressure from rival Rebeca Andrade.

After completing a far-from-perfect asymmetric bars routine, Biles looked nervous as Brazilian Andrade nailed her routines in her bright-yellow, glittering leotard, putting her just 0.166 point behind Biles ahead of the final apparatus.

The 27-year-old Biles still emerged victorious but after receiving her sixth career Olympic gold, told reporters that she never wanted to compete with Andrade again

‘I don’t want to compete with Rebeca no more . I’m tired,’ Biles jokingly told reporters.

‘She’s way too close. I’ve never had an athlete that close so it definitely put me on my toes and it brought up the best athlete in myself.

‘So I’m excited and proud to compete with her but I’m getting uncomfortable guys. I don’t like that feeling. I was stressed.’

U.S. teammate and bronze medalist Sunisa Lee agreed, saying: ‘I swear I’ve never seen you that stressed!’

Andrade, meanwhile, said she was proud to have run Biles so close.

She was filmed by television cameras with a beaming smile as Biles held her final pose to all but complete her gold medal victory, knocking Andrade down to silver.

‘I was very proud of her, it was amazing,’ Andrade said. ‘I was very, very happy.

‘Also because I had a very good competition, and I was proud of myself. So it was a smile of joy for her, a smile of joy for me, because I did my best.’

But despite what Biles said Thursday, the pair will face off again in Paris.

They will both compete in the vault, balance beam and floor finals on Aug. 3 and Aug. 5.

I’m sitting at my kitchen table in the middle of the day, laptop and a bowl of soup in front of me, but my eyes are locked on the TV. Simone Biles is tumbling across the screen, competing for Team USA in women’s gymnastics, and I’m ugly-crying with a dry cracker hanging out of my open mouth.

There’s a part of the Olympics that’s emotional for all of us—the unifying power of sports, the vicarious glory of national pride, imagining that we know what it must feel like for an athlete to carry the weight of their country on their shoulders and triumph. But for me, with this sport, there’s also knowing what it takes, on a specific and granular level, to live in the body of a gymnast.

Simone Biles got her start in gymnastics when she was 6 years old. Which is late, as she’s often said herself—a lot of girls who transcend to elite gymnastics start in their toddler years. I was 7, but I’d had a head start in ballet, already tuned to the need to control every part of my body, down to the bend of my fingers and toes. The appeal was immediate: mastering a new skill is an uncomplicated way to earn the approval of adults, and a team is a ready-made friend group to lean on through your most awkward years. Many gyms have a bell you can ring when you reach a new milestone—and everyone, even the teenagers on the boys team, will drop what they’re doing to cheer.

Over the years, I rose from a complete beginner to a level 5 competitor to, finally, a level 7—what was then the first of the “optional” levels, where gymnasts begin to differentiate and get their own routines, rather than the standardized “compulsory” level routines. Level 7 was as far as I got. I usually say I quit because of a physical limitation, but it was equally a mental one. I felt grizzled, worn down, and done. I was 13.

When I left gymnastics behind, I was still a kid. But my history as a gymnast is one of the most indelible things about me—about anyone who has undergone the physical and spiritual commitment of competitive gymnastics. Most of us learn early what it means to retire, to walk away from something that has been your everything and wonder how you’ll fill the hole. And watching this year’s Olympic team—especially Biles, whose setback at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo was world news—there’s a little part of me that’s cracking open.

When you take on the role of a competitive gymnast, even years before you reach Olympic-caliber levels, you give up so much. You practice for hours after school every day and longer through the summer, replacing school time with gym time. You miss slumber parties and you stay home from sleepaway camp. You watch what you eat, saying no thank you to candy and pizza and chips. You wait for your period while the girls in your class pass tampons and whisper. You study your thighs and your biceps and your calves in the mirror and push down the sting of what kids call you in school. You do your homework at night with a bag of ice under your hamstring or draped over your ankle. You learn to tape your body parts together, to carry a family-size jar of ibuprofen in your backpack, to treat the skin that’s been ripped off your palms with heavy, stinking ointment while you sleep.

But you also grow up fast. You learn to take responsibility for your own time management, to create routine and discipline to ensure your own success, to set goals, break them down into steps, and feel the satisfaction of achieving them. Your body grows strong and capable. You break your school’s PE records for the 100-m sprint, bench press, and vertical leap. You beat any boy who dares to challenge you in arm wrestling. You master the art of extreme focus, tuning out the noise to apply your full attention to the task in front of you as if your life depends on it, because sometimes it sort of does. You amaze yourself with what you can do. You learn to fly.

And to give all that up—especially when you’ve accepted all the aches and pains and sacrifices that come with it—feels like leaving behind the best parts of yourself. Who are you when you can no longer strap your grips around your wrists and soar?

Which is why Biles’ return to the Olympics after pulling out from the competition three years ago is so important, why I can’t stop crying when I watch her compete. The road to gymnastics greatness is paved with girls who flamed out, girls who broke down, girls who decided it wasn’t worth it and threw in the towel. Some of us look back and marvel at how strong and fearless we were. Some of us kick ourselves for failing. What we all have in common is that we fought gymnastics, and gymnastics won.

Three years ago, it looked like even Biles, the GOAT, had been defeated by the sport. She did the right thing prioritizing her safety, and it’s easy to feel now that the choice was obvious, but at the time we feared she was done. It was devastating, physically painful to see her disorientation from the twisties, the mental block that caused her to lose track of her body in space, and it was gutting to watch as she withdrew from event after event. What a way that would have been to end a career.

But Biles persevered. She refused to let her story close on a low. She showed up to the Paris Olympics, ready as ever, and she brought her best. That’s winning—gold is just a bonus.