Simone Biles extended her record of women’s all-around World Gymnastics Championships titles with another convincing gold in Stuttgart.
The 22 year-old’s total score of 58.999 gave her gold by a margin of 2.1 marks.
The success is the American’s 16th world title and follows the team gold that USA women won on Tuesday.
The win was Biles’ fifth all-around world title and she is now one medal short of equalling Vitaly Scherbo’s all-time record of 23 world medals.
With four apparatus finals over the weekend she is expected to overtake the Belarusian.
Biles started the all-around final on vault with a big score of 15.233 and followed that up with high marks on uneven bars (14.733) and beam (14.633).
Going into the last rotation on floor Biles needed 12.3 to overtake China’s Tang Xijing for gold.
And despite two steps out of bounds, her routine was still worthy of 14.4 to seal her fifth world all-around title.
Biles returns to competition on Saturday, when she could claim her 23rd and 24th world medals in the vault and uneven bars apparatus finals.
Should she do so she would become the most successful gymnast in World Championships history.
While on vault she qualified second and is again favourite to retain that title, on bars she qualified in seventh place.
If Biles does not claim the record on Saturday she has two more chances on floor and beam the following day – where she qualified first for each final.
Great Britain’s sole representative in the all around final was Alice Kinsella.
The 18 year-old posted a total of 54.765 to improve upon her qualifying performance to finish a creditable 12th.
