Simone Biles is the most dominant athlete of the 2010s — and it’s not even close

This isn’t even a debate.

I can’t decide if Simone Biles’ historic triple twisting-double somersault is more incredible in slow-motion or real-time. While slow-motion highlights the details of the move she performed during her floor routine on her way to a sixth U.S. national championship in August, the real-time video illustrates just how much she jam-packs into one powerful pass.

It doesn’t really matter, though, because I’ll watch any and all versions of Biles’ high-flying triple-double — or three twists plus two flips — a skill so challenging she was the first woman to do it. That move is just one of the countless examples of her greatness and only one footnote in her decade of dominance.

No athlete in the entire world has dominated his or her respective sport in the 2010s like Biles has in gymnastics. No athlete has redefined dominance or impacted the way others approach competition like she has, and no athlete has the hardware to prove it all like she does.

It’s not even close.

Everyone remembers her utter excellence at the 2016 Rio Olympics when four of her five medals were gold, including her victory in the all-around by an astronomically large margin of more than two points over American teammate Aly Raisman. She led the “Final Five” to team gold, while also finishing at the top of the podium on vault and floor exercise with her lone bronze medal coming on the balance beam.

That summer, Biles became a household name, but she was ruling the gymnastics world years before that.

Since 2013, she’s won 25 world championship medals to become the most decorated male or female gymnast in history at worlds, most recently taking home five golds in Germany in October to raise her career gold medal total at the event to 19. And, looking ahead, it’s possible she could win five more gold medals at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

In every world championship Biles entered this decade, she won gold in the all-around and floor exercise (2013, 2014, 2015, 2018, 2019). In fact, she’s won every all-around competition in which she competed since 2013. (She cleaned up at the Olympics in 2016 and took a break from gymnastics in 2017.)

She was on top of the world for six years this decade, and that is — in the truest sense of the word — unbelievable.

(THOMAS KIENZLE/AFP via Getty Images)

Even after taking some time off following the Rio Games, Biles returned stronger than ever, quite literally reaching new heights. She continues pushing herself to perfect new, gravity-defying skills and test them on the world’s biggest stages.

She won her sixth all-around national title in August, but her overall win actually took a backseat to two jaw-dropping moments from the competition. One was, of course, the triple-double, during which she got so much air that she could have cleared an SUV, as USA TODAY Sports’ Nancy Armour observed.

“I can’t describe what it feels like because we’re in total control of our bodies,” Biles told For The Win about the skill not long after nationals. “So it doesn’t feel like we’re way up there and gravity’s trying to pull us back down. In a way, if feels like we’re flying, but it’s very controlled.”

And with her dismount on the balance beam, she became the first gymnast to land a double-twisting double somersault. The move is so exceptional that at world championships a couple months later, the International Gymnastics Federation actually punished her for having the audacity to perform something only she is capable of in a misguided attempt to deter others from attempting it.

With these two moves, she now has four skills named after her, which happens when a gymnast is the first to successfully perform something new.

So obviously the GOAT in gymnastics, Biles also deserves to be included in debates about the greatest athletes of all time because of her sustained success. She’s so far ahead of her competition that sometimes she can make a mistake and still comfortably win.

Her name deserves to be listed alongside all-time greats like Michael Phelps, Serena Williams, Michael Jordan and Tom Brady, and she continues throwing one impressive accolade after the other on her resume. But as far as total domination of the 2010s goes, Biles stands alone above her peers, above her fellow GOATs and above the laws of physics.

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