Rio de Janeiro, Aug 12 (IANS): Simone Biles added another gold medal to her Rio Games winnings in the women's all-around gymnastics competition, racking up a 2,100-point margin of victory, the largest in Olympic history.
This is the second gold for the 19-year-old U.S. gymnast in Rio, but she still has a chance to win three others in various events, reports Efe.
Biles accumulated 62,198 points in the all-around competition on Thursday, with the silver medal going to her compatriot Alexandra Raisman, with 60,098, and the bronze to Russia's Aliya Mustafina, with 58,665.
Up to today, the biggest margin of victory between gold and silver in the all-around competition had been a very tight 1.4 points when Czechoslovakia's Vera Caslavska beat the Soviet Union's Zinaida Voronina in the 1968 Games.
However, Biles, with her fingernails and eyelids colored gold, far and away exceeded that, earning the best scores in the balance beam, floor exercises and vault. She failed to nail the top score only in the uneven bars, but it didn't matter.
She triumphed in the vault with a maximum-difficulty two-and-a-half turn move that earned her 15,866 points, beating out Mustafina, with her double turn that garnered 15,200.
The Russian next scored 15,666 on the uneven bars -- where she is the reigning Olympic champion -- to lead at the half-way point as Biles managed to score only 14,966 on what is her weakest apparatus.
But the ever-smiling Biles handily took the lead again on the balance beam with 15,433 points, while the Russian committed errors and slipped with just 13,866 points, and then it was time for the final floor exercises, where the American is the current -- and three-time -- world champion.
Biles won the floor routine but Raisman, who was the Olympic champion in London in 2012 and is always superlative in the event, performed flawlessly, thus assuring herself the silver, while Mustafina slid to third.
The United States is ahead in the overall medal count at this point in the Rio Games with 35, followed by China with 25 and Japan with 19.