I know nothing about gymnastics, so in my uneducated mind it all looks the same. What sets her apart and makes her the GOAT? I know she’s unstoppable, but why? What’s she doing on a technical level that sets her apart?
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Lets say there’s a gymnastics skill called a florb.
Doing a florb is hard, but the average person could probably learn to do one if they really tried.
Doing a double florb is out of bounds for most normal people, but fine for most professional gymnasts.
A triple florb is really hard to execute, but some of the best gymnasts can do it.
No one knows how to do a quadruple florb. Except, well, Simone biles I guess.
She’s so good that she’s literally [invented new moves and had them named after her.](http://web.archive.org/web/20240805122053/https://www.cbsnews.com/news/simone-biles-gymnastics-moves-paris-olympics-record-breaking/)
But it’s not just about doing things that are more difficult than everyone else. It’s also to do with the skill and precision while executing the routines. Let’s change metaphor for a second.
Let’s say the skill we’re tested on is to do 10 keepie-uppies with a soccer ball. It’s marked out of 20: 10 points for difficulty (1 point per keepie uppie completed) and up to 10 for execution.
When I do 10 keepie-uppies, I’m running around wildly, barely keeping it up on some kicks and smashing it high into the air and having to run to catch it on others. The ball is going up and down to a totally different height each time, and frankly I’m making it look real hard. They’re keepie-uppies, sure, I get 10 points for doing 10 of them, but they aren’t pretty. 2/10 for execution.
Now Messi comes along. When he does it, he can do 10 standing stock still. Each time, the ball goes to exactly 1.14m in height and stays in the air 1.7 seconds before dropping back onto his foot ready to repeat again. Every one is executed flawlessly, without breaking a sweat. Same 10 points for 10 keepie uppies. But a 10/10 for execution.
So it’s not about the difficulty of skill, but the execution of doing them.
Simone Biles does skills no one else can, AND she absolutely fucking nails the rest. She’s incredible.
(Edited a spelling mistake.)
(Not a gymnast)
The scoring in gymnastics is split into two parts, difficulty and execution. For the difficulty section, each thing the gymnast did whether a flip or a spin or a twist, is assigned points or fractions of a point. For instance on bars, a somersault in tucked (curled up) position is worth less than in pike (legs straight) position, because its physically more difficult to rotate with yor legs out. So to start with, Simone’s routines have a higher difficulty score. And the execution score is how well you perform, was it smooth, did you fall or miss any landings, etc. She scores well for both components, on a lot of apparatus, over several competitions.
Her skills are so difficult that few, if anyone, can replicate. With scoring difficulty and execution separately, she can win with her difficulty points being so high.
If you watch her, she has raw power that most other female gymnasts just don’t. Watch her vault, and she gets significantly more height than the other girls, allowing her time to do more complex tricks. Even on beam, her dismount is explosive, and she jumps so high. On floor exercise, she launches significantly higher on her runs than other contestants, and able to pull moves other women have never had the height and time to attempt.
All the women are insanely good. She just has this speed and explosive power that allows her to do one more flip, one more twist, than her opponents are capable of. So, she nails moves that other women haven’t been able to successfully pull off.
I’m quite surprised you can’t see that what she’s doing has significantly more difficulty than her other competitors. The commentators also explain it well. She has so much power that she often incurs penalties but the difficulty of her routines is so high that she has a huge buffer
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