Biles launches Olympic year with impressive Core Hydration Classic win

Simone Biles launched her 2024 season
with an impressive victory at USA Gymnastics’ Core Hydration Classic on
Saturday, lifting the all-around title with a total of 59.5 points.

It was Biles’s best all-around total since she returned to competition last
year for the first time since her abbreviated Tokyo Olympics campaign.

“I was just happy to be back out there, get through those nerves again, feel
that adrenaline,” said the four-time Olympic gold medallist, who has five
moves named after her.

Biles finished 1.85 points in front of two-time world all-around medallist
Shilese Jones, who like Biles is building toward the US championships and
Olympic trials to determine the five-woman team for the Paris Games.

Biles topped the scores on two of four apparatus — floor exercise and vault
at the meeting in Hartford, Connecticut.

She performed the demanding Yurchenko double pike vault — now named the
Biles II — and unlike last year she didn’t have coach Laurent Landi standing
by at the landing mat as a precaution.

Without a half-point deduction his presence would have incurred Biles scored
15.6 on the vault.

Jones was the only other gymnast to record a score of 15 points, leading the
uneven bars with 15.25.

Suni Lee finished first on the balance beam with 14.6 points to Biles’s 14.55
and Biles led the floor exercise with 14.8.

Tokyo Olympic medallists Jordan Chiles and Jade Carey were third and fourth
as they try to put themselves in contention for Paris after not making the
2023 World Championships team.

The winner of the all-around at the Olympic trials June 27-30 will make the
team for Paris, with a selection committee choosing the other four team
members after the trials.

Top contenders will aim to book their places at trials at the national
championships in Fort Worth, Texas, May 30-June 2. (BSS/AFP)