SAN JOSE — Numbers are not enough to motivate Simone Biles.
Good thing, or it could be a struggle just to get off the couch at this point.
Biles has established herself as the best gymnast in the world, maybe the best of all time, by winning every title there is for three years running. What makes the ever-growing chasm between her and the rest of the world that much more impressive is that she’s done it without a rival pushing her.
Whereas Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson traded spots atop the podium for more than a year and Gabby Douglas chased down Jordyn Wieber, there’s no one breathing down Biles’ neck. Douglas, Aly Raisman, Kyla Ross, Romania’s Larisa Iordache — no disrespect to any of them, but they do not provide competition for Biles.
If it’s going to come from anywhere, it’ll be from her own psyche.
And even that’s not close.
“The (margin of victory) means nothing to her,” Aimee Boorman, Biles’ longtime coach, said Thursday ahead of the Olympic trials. “… It’s not goal driven for her, like, 'I’m going out to do better to beat somebody.’”
The last time anyone came close to Biles was at the 2013 U.S. championships, when she won by two-tenths of a point to begin her unbeaten streak. Since then, she has pulled further and further away from the field.
Iordache is the last to get within a point of her, and that was at the 2014 world championships. Douglas is the reigning Olympic all-around champion, and she finished 1.083 points behind Biles at last year’s world championships.
At the U.S. championships last month, a two-day competition, Biles was almost four points clear of the rest of the field. The results will likely be similar at this weekend’s Olympic trials, with Biles essentially a lock for the Rio team.
Not that she will say that.
“It would be bad if I walked into this competition saying, 'I already have my spot on the team.’ I feel if my personality was like that, which it isn’t, I wouldn’t be as good in practices,” Biles said.
And that attitude is yet another mark of Biles’ greatness.
Think of Tiger Woods, circa 2000. Or Serena Williams in, well, pretty much take your pick of any of the last four years. Yes, they won more than anyone, often by large margins.
But it wasn’t the victories that drove them so much as it was the pursuit of personal excellence. A quest to be better than they were, to find the limit of their physical abilities and then go beyond that. It’s the same with Biles.
“She holds herself to a certain standard and expectation. 'I trained this hard to go out and try to do my best in competition,’” Boorman said.
And therein lies the real challenge. The only challenge these days.
Physically, Biles is superior to anyone in the world. Her routines are packed with so many difficult skills that she’s starting with a cushion of close to a point.
But these are skills she’s been doing for years. Tough as they may be for other gymnasts, they are now second-nature to her.
In years past, Biles would try out even harder tricks in the gym, just for fun. (When Boorman posted videos of a few last weekend, the Internet exploded.) But as the Rio Games have gotten closer, Biles and Boorman have curtailed the playtime.
It’s a wise move — no sense risking injury for a skill she’s not going to do in competition — but it does make things kind of dull.
“To do the bubblewrap mode that everybody says we have to keep her in, she’s not doing anything new,” Boorman said. “I would say she’s probably been a little bored this year because she doesn’t have those adventures.”
It was worse in the beginning of the year, when the Olympics were still so many months away. Biles also didn’t compete as much as some of the other Americans did, either, doing only one all-around before nationals.
But as the Games have gotten closer, the monotony of her routine has turned to motivation.
“I have the biggest goal of my whole entire life ahead of me,” Biles said.
And that is to be her best on the grandest stage there is. Do that, and the closest anyone will get to her is when they go to place the Olympic gold medal around her neck.
