Biles takes 23rd World title
Gymnastics superstar Simone Biles capped her impressive comeback after a two-year break with gold medals on the floor and balance beam on Sunday taking her to 23 world titles, less than 10 months before the Paris Olympics. Biles also won all-around and team gold with the United States in Antwerp where she won her first world titles a decade ago. The 26-year-old leaves the Flemish port city with five medals – four gold and a silver – to bring her tally to 30 medals at world championships. "I feel like I've no words really," said Biles of her week in Antwerp. "I was just excited, out here competing, having that pressure again. The crowd, the energy, being out there." "The whole entire experience that we've had at this world championships, I think we learned a lot from it, moving forward." In a high-level beam final, Biles landed every skill with near perfection, with the title decided by a tiny margin, as Zhou Yaqin also impressed. Biles scored 14.800, with 17-year-old Zhou just 0.100 behind. Brazilian Rebeca Andrade, who had beaten Biles the day before in the vault final, took bronze. Barely an hour and a half later, the four-time Olympic champion was back on the competition stage for the floor final. Biles' return has been impressive two years after the "twisties", a temporary mental block whereby gymnasts lose the sense of where they are in the air, badly affected her Tokyo Olympics. She withdrew from four of five individual finals in Japan, taking team silver despite withdrawing midway through the competition and beam bronze. Biles then stopped training completely and only returned to competition last August in the United States, in a bid to compete in the 2024 Paris Olympics. "I was a little bit worried, but I know that I've been trained properly and that whatever happens happens, so I wasn't too worried about medal count or medal colour," she said. "I can't answer any questions for the future, I'm just going to live in the now." (AFP)