2019 Artistic Gymnastics World Championships

Sunisa Lee Wins Floor Silver, Simone Biles Breaks More Records

Sunisa Lee Wins Floor Silver, Simone Biles Breaks More Records

The second day of event finals had so many memorable moments it was difficult to narrow down the biggest headlines of the day.

Oct 14, 2019 by Miranda Martin
Sunisa Lee Wins Floor Silver, Simone Biles Breaks More Records

The second day of event finals had so many memorable moments it was difficult to narrow down the biggest headlines of the day. Although there were many more exciting moments, here are the three biggest headlines of the day from the final day of the 2019 World Championships. 

Simone Biles breaks even more records

As impossible as it seems, there are some records Simone Biles has yet to break, and she snagged a few more of these world records on the final day of World Championships. She took gold on both beam and floor, giving her 25 total worlds medals. With the 24th medal, she became the most decorated gymnast in worlds history. Winning beam gold also gave her three beam gold medals total, which is the most in gymnastics history. 


Besides breaking records, Biles getting gold on beam and floor today gave her five out of six possible gold medals in this competition—team, all-around, vault, beam, and floor, only missing bars. Biles competed last on floor, giving a huge finish to the floor competition and sweeping past all the other scores that were given prior. 


“Overall it was a very happy worlds, probably one of my best ones yet, so I feel pretty confident going into next Olympic year,” Biles said. “I couldn’t be more thrilled with my performance and it gives me confidence moving forward.”

Behind Biles on beam was Liu Tingting of China in second place, Li Shijia of China in third, and the USA’s Kara Eaker in fourth. Eaker was not originally supposed to compete in event finals, but gained a spot after Ellie Black’s injury. Anne-Marie Padurariu fell twice, giving up her spot on the podium this year after taking silver at last year’s worlds. 


Sunisa Lee takes silver on floor

Second only to teammate Simone Biles, Lee showed up with an incredible performance on floor and took home silver. Although she was a full point behind Biles, scoring a 14.133 as compared to Biles’ 15.133, the rest of the competition was very tight. Angelina Melnikova of Russia took third, but it was a tight competition that could have gone to anyone, as the gap between second place and eighth was about 0.6 of a point. 


Lee is a first year senior, making this her first world championships and a very successful one. “I think this is giving me a lot of confidence just because I didn’t really have any confidence in myself before this. So it feels really good,” Lee said. 


Nikita Nagornyy wins an unexpected third gold

After his team and all-around gold medals, Nagornyy was completely surprised when he took first on vault in event finals. “The one with the most value for me is the team medal, then the all-around medal, then the vault medal,” he said. “I didn’t expect that one. I thought that maybe I could take third place, but then the other competitors had some mistakes and that allowed me to win the gold medal.”


Nagornyy’s teammate, Artur Dalaloyan, finished right behind him, giving both gold and silver on vault to Russia. Dalaloyan also finished second in the all-around competition behind Nagornyy, making this another gold and silver finish for Russia this week. “I feel very happy that me and Artur are on the podium together, again. And if Artur had taken the first place, I would also be very, very happy about him.” 

Igor Radivilov took third on vault, bringing home another medal for Ukraine. “I am very happy, 100%, because it was my main goal to win a medal at the world championships and until now, it was not that successful, because some things in the competition were not so good,” Radivilov said. “But here, today it was a very successful vault and so I am very happy.”

Nagornyy took first by just 0.033 of a point, and the top three gymnasts all competed with a difficulty of 5.6, so it was a fun podium as it truly showed whose execution was best that day.