Olympic champion Simone Biles has returned to the sport of gymnastics and just competed in her first meet since the 2016 Rio Olympics. The US Classic was held on July 28 and it is a meet where gymnasts can fine tune skills on all or specific events, perform new skills before judges, and in Biles’ case, make comebacks. With all eyes on the gymnast who has 19 World and Olympic medals to her name, Biles won the meet with a 58.700 score, showing the world she is still one of the best in her field.

Simone Biles began her US Classic meet on floor exercise

In preparation for the new 2017-2020 Code of Points, which devalued many skills, Biles has been seen training major upgrades on the floor exercise, including her new opening tumbling pass of a double twisting double layout (called a Moors). On such a difficult skill, that only a handful in the world can perform successfully, Biles had so much power that she bounced out of bounds with both feet at the US Classic. Her second pass was also an upgrade that fulfills the CoP requirements of having a front somersault in the routine. She then flew effortlessly through her own skill named after her, a double layout with a half-turn out.

Uneven bars challenged Biles

Simone Biles also upgraded her bar routine to debut at the US Classic, the weakest of her four events. She included a new transition from low bar to high bar, as well as a more difficult dismount. In warmup, Biles fell on a simple release skill, and during the routine, she came too close to the bar and clipped her foot, which threw off her concentration.

Kicking into a pirouette on the bar, she didn’t have enough rotation and came off the bar clearly flustered. She finished the routine strong, with the new double twisting double back dismount and had a look of anger going into balance beam.

Biles earns a high score on balance beam

Biles needed a 14.0 on beam once McCusker finished her routine on floor exercise.

Biles, the Olympic bronze medalist on beam, breezed through skills she performed in the previous quad, with only minor mistakes, earning a score of 15.2. That score put her at the top of the leaderboard, once more, by a 1.2-point margin over McCusker.

Post-Olympic highlights

Since the 2016 Rio Olympic Games, Biles appeared on “Dancing With the Stars," had a Lifetime TV movie released about her life, and joined her gold-medal winning teammates while getting inducted into the USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame.

Watch Simone Biles' brand new floor routine below.
© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED