Simone Biles is as dominant as ever on first day of U.S. championships

Biles is as dominant as ever. She cruised to the lead on the first day of the U.S. championships, with a massive all-around score of 60.450. On each apparatus, Biles improved on her scores from an excellent showing in her season debut two weeks ago. In this two-day competition that concludes Sunday, Biles has a lead of more than three points over Skye Blakely in second place.

For years, the next-best Americans have not been able to keep up with Biles, and so her performances are more appropriately judged against her potential and her past. On Friday at Dickies Arena, Biles didn’t have any major mistakes. Her power sometimes sends her flying out of bounds on floor or forces her to take multiple steps back on vault, but all evening she stayed poised and in control.

Biles, chasing her ninth U.S. all-around title, nearly stuck the triple-twisting double tuck that begins her floor routine, and her night began when she performed an excellent Yurchenko double pike. It’s the hardest vault in women’s gymnastics, but in the first rotation Friday night, Biles soared through the air, rotated twice and planted her feet into the mat. She had just a step backward and hardly any deductions on her way to a huge 15.800. No other gymnast scored higher than a 15.000 in this competition.

That vault, so complex and beautifully executed, is a reminder of how Biles has a significant advantage in every competition she enters. She builds a huge cushion with her difficulty scores, then performs her routines so well that she doesn’t need that margin for error.

Biles worked smoothly through her bars routine, scoring a 14.650, then rotated to beam and punctuated another strong set with a nearly stuck full-twisting double tuck dismount to earn a 14.800. Biles had the best marks of the evening on all four events.

This season, Biles has increased her scoring potential on three of four apparatuses, widening the already large gap between her and her peers, in the United States and around the world.

After a disorienting mental block derailed Biles’s performance at the Tokyo Games, forcing her to withdraw from multiple finals, she returned to competition last year. Biles was spectacular, showing no signs of lingering trouble with her difficult skills. She won five medals, four of them gold, at the world championships, and this season she’s performing at an even higher level that no other American can come close to matching.

Shilese Jones, the second-best all-around gymnast in the country, withdrew from the national championships because of a shoulder injury. She tore her labrum in 2022, and she said it flared up after the U.S. Classic on May 18. Jones will submit a petition for a spot at the Olympic trials, and she almost certainly will be allowed to participate. After Sunday’s competition, the U.S. selection committee will announce which gymnasts advance to the trials.

Jones’s absence creates a battle for second place, and Blakely (57.050) has a narrow edge over Kayla DiCello (56.850) in third. Blakely debuted a new, more difficult vault to score a 15.000, and she was steady on the other three events. Sunisa Lee, the Olympic all-around champion, is in fourth after competing in the all-around at an elite competition for the first time since the Tokyo Olympics.