There are a lot of reasons it’s difficult to quantify how profoundly astounding Simone Biles has been during her career as a gymnast, but perhaps the most germane is the method used to quantify her performances.
When it was Nadia Comaneci on the uneven parallel bars at the 1976 Olympics, everyone watching plainly could understand the first-ever perfect 10. It was a moment that helped build the stage and broaden the audience for those athletes who followed, all the way up to Biles’ introduction to the planet more than a decade ago.
When Biles won her first World Championship in 2013, however, she did not score a single perfect 10. In winning the women’s All-Around title six times, she never hit that mark once. Because it no longer exists. The scoring system in gymnastics now is so complicated it requires knowledge of the sport and a Masters’ in Applied Mathematics to comprehend.
I believe that’s the biggest reason Biles was not selected by the staff of AllSportsPeople as the No. 1 athlete from the first 25 years of the 21st century. Man, I tried. Obviously, I failed. Perhaps this is not so much a reason as an excuse. I’m sticking to it.
MORE: Lionel Messi tops SN's list of the top 25 athletes since 2000
The person who earned that honor, soccer’s Lionel Messi, has scored more goals than just about any man who’s ever played the sport. Among those in the top 10, you’ve got Tom Brady with his passing yards and LeBron James with his career scoring record. The greatness of Michael Phelps and Usain Bolt can be assessed with the stopwatch that now resides within all of our phones.
With Biles, it’s “Difficulty” and “Execution” and who-knows-what’s-a-great-score?
We can see she’s extraordinary. One athlete goes this high on a floor exercise tumbling run, and she goes that high. One athlete pops off the vault after her sprint toward the table, Biles soars. She does routines and skills none of her peers, none of her predecessors, could conceive. She has five gymnastics elements named for her, because she was the first ever to master them.
Talk to those who’ve worked in the gymnastics field, many of whom performed on some or all of the apparatus involved in Biles’ events, and their reverence is overwhelming. For the largest part of his career, Messi was included in a persistent debate regarding whether he or Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo was the greatest soccer player of the era, and both had to deal with the shadows cast by Pele and Maradona. We’re going on a decade of LeBron vs. Michael Jordan arguments about the best in basketball history. Tom Brady rose to the top of every football chart with his seventh Super Bowl victory; that it took that much to separate him reveals how narrow the margin remains.
Biles is so far beyond – and above – her competition.
SN ARCHIVE: Simone Biles, already USA's top gymnast, is not done flying
NBC gymnastics analyst and Olympic gold medalist Tim Daggett told SN in advance of the Paris 2024 Olympics that the first time he saw Biles perform, he felt “shock” at how gifted she was.
“It was just shocking to see someone that had all of the qualities that you need to be a tremendous gymnast – and just have more of them, and to a higher degree, than anybody I’d ever seen before.”
He is amazed by her dynamism – the combination of strength, quickness and body control that are unmatched in the sport’s history – but also at the work she has done to perfect it.
“You get this magic that happens: this super-gifted person that also is technically a maestro, and it produces those incredible moments.”
She is one of only three gymnasts to win the Olympic all-around twice, and she did it the second time while performing on a leg injured before the finals. She then was the most important contributor to the United States’ team gold medal. She has won seven gold medals at the Olympics, 11 overall, and 23 gold medals at the World Championships.
Perhaps those numbers ought to help her case, but there are other athletes who’ve won more Olympic golds (Michael Phelps, most notably). Largely because of the complexity in gymnastics scoring – please don’t expect me to explain all that – it can be hard for laypersons to conceive of how enormous the difference is between Biles and her competition, and why she is the greatest of the many amazing athletes we’ve been fortunate to observe in the past 25 years.
In 2021, former Olympian Bart Conner called her the “most dominant gymnast in the history of the sport,” largely because “she’s doing the most difficult gymnastics ever attempted, and she does it effortlessly.”
USA Today columnist Nancy Armour wrote last summer, after Biles won her second Olympic all-around title, she was “the best ever to do it, and it’s not even close. In her sport. And in all others.”
Perhaps I should have gotten Nancy to help lobby my colleagues.
Perhaps while she was at it, she could have explained gymnastics scoring.
Biles may not be a perfect 10, but she ought to have been No. 1 here.