At the 2018 World Championships in Doha, Simone Biles of the United States won her fourth world all-around title, a record at the time. The win came despite visible mistakes, which says as much about her level of difficulty as any perfect routine could.
A title won with margin to spare
Biles had built such a difficulty advantage that she could absorb errors that would end anyone else's hopes. In Doha she did not have a clean final, and she still finished well clear of the field. She had also competed through illness during the championships, having been treated in hospital for a kidney stone on the eve of qualification.
The race behind her
The contest for the other medals was much closer. Japan's Mai Murakami took silver and Morgan Hurd of the United States took bronze, with only small margins separating the gymnasts chasing the podium. For European fans, the final was also a measure of how the best European all-rounders compared with the world's top two nations at the midpoint of the Tokyo cycle.
Why we covered it on a European site
World Championships are where European gymnasts measure themselves against the best in the world. Doha 2018 was also the championship where Russia's Artur Dalaloyan won the men's all-around title, a result that shaped expectations for the 2019 European season. Our Szczecin 2019 coverage picks up that story.
Looking back
Biles went on to add more world titles and Olympic medals, and her influence on women's gymnastics reached well beyond results. Several elements in the Code of Points bear her name. For European programmes, her era raised the question of how to compete with a gymnast whose difficulty sat in a category of its own: most chose to focus on execution and on team depth.
Lessons from Doha
- Difficulty creates a buffer; execution decides everything else. - Close races for minor medals are often won on beam. - Big championships test health and resilience as much as skill.
For a plain explanation of difficulty and execution scores, read how gymnastics scoring works.
