Simone Biles wins her seventh gold medal and keeps her hopes of equaling the record alive

Simone Biles took another step toward co-owning a gold medal record… but she’ll need to be perfect in her final two events to etch her name into history once again.

The most decorated American gymnast in Olympic history won a gold medal in the vault final on Saturday — her seventh career gold medal, leaving her just two shy of tying the record of nine gold medals, the most by any female gymnast.

If you haven’t seen the event yet (spoiler alert), it’s worth watching anyway, because Simone keeps busting out moves the world has barely seen before… some of which are named after her, by the way.

This is Simone’s third gold in Paris… and, as we said, it leaves her two away from equalling the record of nine held by the Soviet gymnast. Larisa Latynina who competed in the 1956, 1960 and 1964 Olympic Games. She is tied for second place with True Čáslavská who competed for Czechoslovakia.

Pretty impressive… especially considering none of those countries exist anymore… Simone really is in a class of her own in modern gymnastics.

That said, all good things must come to an end… and Biles has hinted that this could be her last Olympics, saying… does not want to confront Brazilian competitor Rebecca Andrade more so after achieving victory against her in the individual complete competition.

Some have dismissed it as a humorous, humbling moment from the sport’s greatest — but there’s certainly an element of truth to that, because Biles will be 31 by the time 2028 rolls around, and winning would make her the oldest gymnast to take home gold.

If this is indeed her last Olympics (and, given her performance, it’s always possible she’ll be at risk of making it to 2028), then she needs to be perfect in her final two events. She’ll compete on the balance beam and floor over the next few days — and she needs to win both to equal the record.