HARTFORD, Conn. — As Simone Biles and her coaches determined her routines for the Olympic year, they had a safe option available: Biles could perform the same skills as last season. They knew that formula worked. Biles won every competition she entered, with only rare mistakes. Those routines, comfortable and consistent, helped Biles show she would not be rattled by the same mental block that derailed her at the Tokyo Olympics.
The difficulty of Biles’s skills in 2023 gave her an advantage over her peers, but she had several more complicated options tucked away in her arsenal. She just chose not to include them in her competitive repertoire.
Replicating last season’s plan could have been the rational choice for this year, especially as the pressure and attention on Biles intensifies. Why take more risks when she won five world championships medals, four of them gold, without needing to?
But Biles’s approach to gymnastics has never been conservative. She proved it again Saturday in her season debut. With about two months until the Paris Olympics, Biles cruised to the U.S. Classic all-around title while unveiling tweaks to her routines that upped her scoring potential on three of the four apparatuses.
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Biles performed a triple-twisting double tuck as her opening tumbling pass on floor. That skill, known as the Biles II, was a staple in her routines in 2019 and 2021 but not last year. On bars, Biles introduced a new dismount combination. Entering the Tokyo Games, Biles finished her routine with a double-twisting double tuck, but now she does a pirouetting element immediately before. And on vault, Biles’s coach Laurent Landi no longer stands on the mat for safety, which he chose to do last year despite the half-point deduction.
“She’s feeling good,” said Cecile Landi, who coaches Biles alongside her husband. “She’s looking good. She’s mentally and physically fit.”
At the U.S. Classic, Biles had a few landing deductions — she bounced out of bounds after her triple-double on floor, and she had two large backward steps on her powerful Yurchenko double pike vault — but otherwise, her routines were strong. Biles’s all-around score (59.500) was better than all of her outings last year.
Across the four events, Biles’s difficulty scores totaled 25.9, which also topped her best mark from 2023. She can increase that number slightly because she missed a connection on beam that lowered her difficulty score from a 6.5 to a 6.3.
Difficulty scores are fluid because they depend on which elements a gymnast performs and whether judges award credit to all skills in a routine. During 2023, Biles’s combined mark fluctuated between 24.3 and 25.7. The largest swing in her score comes from vault. When Biles attempts the Yurchenko double pike, the hardest vault in women’s gymnastics and one that bears her name, she receives 0.8 difficulty points more than her second-most difficult option.
In the all-around final at last year’s world championships, Biles did not try the Yurchenko double pike, and her combined difficulty score was a 24.5. That gave her just under a full-point cushion over her top challenger, Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade, who tallied 23.7 points in difficulty. It was a smaller advantage than Biles held at world championships in 2018 and 2019.
The Yurchenko double pike significantly lifts Biles’s scoring potential, but her coach’s decision to stand on the mat negated some of the skill’s value. Still, Biles’s coaches were adamant last year that it was the right decision. A half-point deduction seemed like a worthy trade for knowing someone could step in to help prevent an injury if the skill went awry.
At the time, Cecile Landi admitted the decision stemmed more from her husband than from Biles. On Saturday, Cecile said Biles was ready last year to perform the vault without Laurent nearby, but Laurent was not yet comfortable.
“As a coach, you have a lot of responsibility, and I definitely don’t want anybody to get hurt if we can prevent it,” Cecile Landi said. “That’s such a hard skill, and it was her first season back after everything that happened in Tokyo. It was not worth taking any kind of risk.”
Now, they all have confidence.
Biles has earned that trust. Through her career, Biles has challenged the boundaries of the sport. But her complex routines never seem like a gamble. Some gymnasts debut new skills, and it’s clear they are still mastering the element. They might land short or fly through the air with messy form. That hasn’t been Biles’s approach. When she showcases something new, it’s ready.
That didn’t change here when Biles revealed her Olympic-year routines. They’re different than before — slightly harder with a higher scoring ceiling — but Biles’s steadiness hasn’t wavered.
