The Incredible Simone Biles

The double Yurchenko Pike – I know nothing about gymnastics at all, but it just sounds hard. Apparently, it is hard. So hard that no female gymnast before Simone Biles had ever done it (a few men have done it, but not many). It’s a double back flip off the beam, but at some point between the run-up and the flip she has to turn her body around front to back. I’ve watched the video a couple of times. It happens so fast I can’t see it happen. Her body is faster than the eye. She is like a full body magician. She is magnificent, stunning, awesome, a freak of nature, a person endowed with super powers.
The judges gave her a 6.6. I guess, as far as the double Yurchenko Pike goes, they reckon it was only fair to middling. Not that any of them could have pulled it off. That’s not their job. They’re job is just to sit on their judgmental asses and judge.
It’s as if people watching at home, in July of 1969, had said “Eh, as far as moon landings go, this one wasn’t all that great.”
To her tremendous credit, Simone Biles is being very cool about it all. “That’s on them, that’s not on me” she said. Very reminiscent of Jim Thorpe, after being stripped of his Olympic medals for once having played a little minor league baseball, saying “I know I won those races.”
As an athlete, she is absolutely without comparison. Greatest of all time is an understatement. As a human being, she is a class act.