Simone Biles won her sixth world all-around title at the 2023 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in Antwerp, collecting her 30th career world medal to become the most decorated gymnast in history.
A return to the arena where it all began
Sunday’s all-around final inside the Sportpaleis brought Biles full circle. A decade earlier, at sixteen, she had claimed her first world all-around crown in the same Belgian city.
She delivered the highest combined score across four apparatuses, pulling clear of the field. The 26-year-old was operating at a level nobody else could reach.
Six titles across ten years, a record without equal
No other female gymnast has won the world all-around more than three times. Biles now holds six, a span that bridges two distinct eras of the sport and a two-year hiatus after Tokyo.
Her name entered the codebook again during the same championships when she became the first woman to land the Yurchenko double pike vault. That element, the Biles II, carries the highest difficulty value on the women’s vault table.
The 30 world medals place her alone at the summit of the sport. Her collection includes titles on every apparatus except uneven bars, alongside four team golds with the United States.
The achievement followed a return few thought possible. In 2021 she withdrew mid-Olympics after losing air awareness, prioritising her health before returning for a beam bronze.
Ten years after she first stood on that floor as a teenager, the champion returned to the same stage and wrote the final entry in one of gymnastics’ defining records.
