Simone Biles wins her 6th world all-around gold medal, breaking her own record

Ten years after she won her first world title in Antwerp, Belgium, at age 16, Simone Biles added another all-around gold medal to her collection Friday in the same city where it all began.

She became the most decorated gymnast in history and the first female gymnast to win six all-around world titles.

This win, at the Artistic Gymnastics World Championships, marks her 27th world medal and breaks the record for total world and Olympic medals combined, passing Larisa Latynina, who represented the Soviet Union. Biles now has 34 world and Olympic medals: 27 world championship medals — 21 of which are gold — and seven Olympic medals.

The reigning all-around world champion, Rebeca Andrade of Brazil, won the silver medal, and Biles’ teammate, Shilese Jones, claimed the bronze.

For the first time in the history of the sport, the world all-around podium was comprised of three Black gymnasts.

In the all-around final, gymnasts must compete on all four events: vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor. Biles set the tone for her competition with a stuck landing on her first skill. She did not compete her eponymous Yurchenko double pike vault, but opted for a Cheng and scored a 15.100.

Biles then moved to the uneven bars, where she delivered a clean routine for a 14.333. The event is the only apparatus where Biles did not top the standings in the qualification round, but she will still be in the uneven bars final on Saturday.

She wobbled at the beginning of her performance on the balance beam, but delivered a confident routine after a shaky start. With just under a point lead over Jones and Andrade going into the fourth and final rotation, Biles needed a score of 12.901 to win the gold medal. She stumbled on a dance skill, but hit all of her tumbling passes to score a 14.533.

Biles' individual all-around win came two days after she led the U.S. women’s team to their seventh consecutive gold medal. The team competition started on a tough note for Team USA, with Joscelyn Roberson, who trains alongside Biles at World Champions Centre in Spring, Texas, sustaining an injury in warmups and being carried off the podium before the first rotation. Roberson appeared to land at a low angle while she was warming up for a difficult vault called the “Cheng,” which Biles also performs.

"I felt like half of me was gone out there,” Biles told NBC Sports about Roberson's last-minute injury. “Everyone kind of got a little bit frazzled ... You saw the strength and the courage of our team to keep going.”

Regardless, that day the U.S. team finished more than two points ahead of the silver medal-winning team, Brazil. Biles competed on all four events, anchored the final rotation and delivered the floor routine that clinched the team gold. On Wednesday her score of 15.166 was the highest floor score of the championships.

Biles also became the oldest U.S. woman to ever win a world championship medal at age 26.

Biles already has two gold medals from these world championships, but she still has plenty of competition ahead of her. She qualified for every possible final, including every individual apparatus final. Biles qualified in first place for the all-around, vault, floor exercise and balance beam finals and in fifth place for the uneven bars final.

In the qualification round Sunday, Biles became the first woman to land a new vault, the Yurchenko double pike, successfully getting the skill named after her in the code of points. It has been awarded a difficulty score of 6.4 — the highest of any vault in women’s gymnastics — and will be called the “Biles II,” as it is her second original skill on the apparatus.

Sunday also marked her return to international competition after she struggled with the “twisties“ and pulled out of multiple events at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

The individual apparatus finals for vault and uneven bars are scheduled for Saturday, and balance beam and floor finals are scheduled for the final day of competition Sunday. All four events will be broadcast live on Peacock.

CORRECTION (Oct. 6, 2023, 6:50 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the historic nature of the world title Simone Biles won on Friday She is the first female gymnast to win six all-around world titles, not the first gymnast overall.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com