Who has the most medals in gymnastics

Going into the Tokyo Olympics, Simone Biles was already the most accomplished gymnast of our time. With her bronze medal in the balance beam final on Tuesday, she tied two important records in the sport.

Biles, 24, now has a total of 32 Olympic and world medals, matching Larisa Latynina of the Soviet Union, though Biles has more golds overall. Biles also has earned seven Olympic medals, tying Shannon Miller as the most successful American gymnast in the Games. Biles, though, has four golds to Miller’s two.

Miller, 44, earned her Olympic medals in 1992 and in 1996, the year when the Americans first won the team event.

Latynina, 86, competed when the countries behind the Iron Curtain were dominating women’s gymnastics. Between 1956 and 1964, she won 18 Olympic medals. She maintains the record for the most Olympic gold medals by any gymnast: nine.

Context is important. The complexity of gymnastics has evolved tremendously since Latynina’s time, partially because of the equipment. Back then, the uneven bars were less flexible, and the floor exercise mat and beam did not have springs. The vault was not shaped like a table, but instead resembled the narrower pommel horse used by the men.

“What we did is not comparable to what modern gymnasts do,” Latynina said in a recent interview with Reuters. “Looking at what gymnasts today do, I’m a little afraid. Would I have started gymnastics or not?”

Biles holds several records outright. Among both men and women, she has the most world championship medals, 25, and the most gold medals, 19, in those competitions. She also holds the most all-around titles from world championships — five — because the competition was less frequent until 1978.

She was also the first American gymnast to win a world championship medal on every apparatus.

Simone Biles has long been considered one of the greatest gymnasts ever, and now she has the medals to back that up.

With two medals won in Tokyo -- a silver in team and a bronze in balance beam -- Biles matched Shannon Miller's Olympic medal total of seven, which is the most among American gymnasts.

Before Tokyo, Biles also competed in the Rio Olympics in 2016, where she won five medals in team, all-around, vault, and floor events. She also won bronze on the balance beam in 2016, mirroring her beam placement in Tokyo after an exhilarating comeback performance.

Miller also competed in two Olympic Games, Barcelona 1992 and Atlanta 1996. She led the "Magnificent Seven" to Team USA's first-ever gold in team events, and became the first American to win gold on the balance beam.

Just seven American women have won as many or more career Olympic medals than Biles. Here's how they lined up, by medal count.

Jenny Thompson, Swimming: 12 medals (8 gold, 3 silver, 1 bronze)
Dara Torres, Swimming: 12 medals (4 gold, 4 silver, 4 bronze)
Natalie Coughlin, Swimming: 12 medals (3 gold, 4 silver, 5 bronze)
Allyson Felix, Track and Field: 9 medals (6 gold, 3 silver)
Allison Schmitt, Swimming: 8 medals (4 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze)
Shirley Babashoff, Swimming: 8 medals (2 gold, 6 silver)
Dana Vollmer, Swimming: 7 medals (5 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze)
Amanda Beard, Swimming: 7 medals (2 gold, 4 silver, 1 bronze)
Shannon Miller, Gymnastics: 7 medals (2 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze)

Most medal records are set and held by swimmers due to the number of events and career longevity that swimmers have compared to gymnasts, which makes Biles' run especially notable.

In addition to her Olympic accomplishments, Biles is a five-time all-around world champion, five-time floor exercise world champion and seven-time United States national all-around champion.

Despite withdrawing from almost all gymnastics events at the Tokyo Olympics, Simone Biles has had perhaps the most closely watched and discussed week of any Olympian this year. From being a gymnastics favorite to becoming a champion for mental health, here’s a timeline of Biles’ week at the 2020 Olympics.

Simone BilesTeam USAUSA GymnasticsOlympic medalsmedal count

U.S. gymnast Simone Biles poses with her five gold medals at the 2019 World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany. With her wins, she becomes the most decorated gymnast ever at the world championships, with 25 total medals.

Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images

Simone Biles is the greatest gymnast of our time – or any time in history. She proved that Sunday at the World Championships, where she raked in her 24th and 25th world medals, both gold.

Biles, 22, took home five of the six golds to be won in Stuttgart, Germany, winning the top of the podium in team competition, all-around, and vault in addition to floor and beam. (On the uneven bars, she took fifth.)

Combining skills of unprecedented difficulty with flawless execution, Biles surpassed Belarusian Vitaly Scherbo's record 23 world medals he won in the 1990s.

A gold on the balance beam evaded Biles at the 2016 Olympics in Rio, and so she has her eyes on that prize next summer in Tokyo. The goal that appeared well within reach with her rock-solid performance on Sunday. She won the beam competition by more than half a point – even though she opted not to perform the difficult dismount that's named for her, a double twisting double back.

The dismount, called the Biles, became the subject of controversy in the days before the world championships.

FIG, the international governing body for gymnastics, decided earlier this month to award the dismount a difficulty rating just one tenth higher than the same move with one fewer twist. Many (including Biles herself) were critical of that decision, spurring FIG to release a statement in which it claimed the committee had made its decision in part out of concern for gymnasts' safety.

That rating led Biles to scrap the dismount on Sunday. "It's not worth the one-tenth (extra difficulty point). I'm sorry, it's just not," she said, according to The Associated Press.

But on the floor, Biles soared with another element named for her: a triple-twisting double back. As NBC's announcer intoned, Biles' floor routine was so packed with difficulty that she could have removed a twist from each tumbling pass and still won. Biles captured the event with a score of 15.133, a full point higher than her second-place U.S. teammate Sunisa Lee.