Gymnastics' international governing body, the FIG, was founded in 1881 and still runs international gymnastics, and scoring at that level follows its Code of Points. In 2006, the Code of Points and the entire gymnastics scoring system were overhauled. Before 2006, the highest possible score in gymnastics was a perfect 10, and every routine was assigned a start value based on difficulty, from which judges deducted for execution errors. The newer scoring system removed the perfect 10. Under the 2006 system, two panels of judges score each routine, and each panel evaluates a different aspect of the performance: the E score covers execution and artistry, and the D score covers skill requirements, difficulty value and connection value. The execution score of a routine starts at 10.0 points, and the difficulty score starts at zero and goes up as harder skills are added.

In the Code of Points, skill difficulty is ranked in letters from A, worth .10, up to J, worth 1.0, and execution errors are judged small, medium or large, and cost 0.1, 0.3 or 0.5 points. The maximum E score is 10, but there is no cap on the D score, so in theory a score could be infinite, and women's routines count only the eight most difficult skills in the difficulty score. In major competitions, the average marks for routines have generally been in the low to mid-teens, and under the open-ended scoring system no gymnast has received a perfect score. Women's artistic gymnastics has four events: vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise, and the vault is scored by difficulty values from 2.0, the easiest, to 6.4, the most difficult.

The vault is both an event and the main piece of equipment used in that event, and it is the only apparatus that has a predetermined difficulty score. The balance beam is 125 centimeters (4 feet) high, 500 centimeters (16 feet) long and only 10 centimeters (3.9 inches) wide. The beam existed as early as the 1880s as a "low beam" close to the floor, and by the 1920s it was raised much higher. The uneven bars are two horizontal bars set at different heights, adapted by the Czechoslovak Sokol from the men's parallel bars, and gymnasts perform swings, pirouettes, transition moves between the bars, and releases. The women's floor exercise is a 90-second choreographed routine performed to instrumental music. In 2004, the traditional vaulting horse was replaced with a new, safer apparatus, which led gymnasts to attempt harder vaults.

Women have competed at the Olympic Games in artistic gymnastics since 1952, and the women's program was introduced at the 1950 World Championships. In 1997, the FIG raised the minimum age for international elite competition to 16. Under the "new life" rule used since 1989, scores from one session of a competition do not carry over to the next. A new skill takes its name from the first gymnast who performs it successfully at an official FIG event, and as of November 2026, Simone Biles has five skills named after her: two on floor exercise, two on vault and one on balance beam. In 2019, she debuted the Biles on balance beam, a double-twisting double-tucked somersault dismount.

Simone Biles was born on March 14, 1997, in Columbus, Ohio. She first tried gymnastics at age 6, on a field trip with her day-care group, and she began training with coach Aimee Boorman at age eight. She started her elite gymnastics career at age 14, on July 1, 2011. At the 2013 World Championships, she won the all-around with a score of 60.216, and in 2015 she became the first woman to win three consecutive world all-around titles. At the 2018 World Championships, she won the all-around by a margin of 1.7 points, won her first world vault title and became the first American woman to win a world medal on every event. At the 2019 World Championships, she won the all-around with a score of 58.999, a record-setting 2.1 points ahead of second place, completed a triple-twisting double somersault on floor exercise as the first woman to do so, and led Team USA to its fifth consecutive world team title.

At the 2023 World Championships, Simone Biles earned her sixth world all-around gold medal with an overall score of 58.399, won an unprecedented sixth world gold medal on floor exercise and won the balance beam with a score of 14.800. She became the only gymnast to qualify for all individual event finals. At the 2023 U.S. Championships, she won her eighth national all-around title, broke the 90-year-old record held by Al Jochim, who had won seven national titles, and became the oldest woman to win the national all-around title, at 26 years and 166 days old.

At the 2016 Olympics, Simone Biles qualified as the top gymnast in four of the five individual finals, won four gold medals, and won her first Olympic gold in the team event, on August 9. At the 2024 Olympics in Paris, she helped the U.S. team win the team gold medal and won the vault gold medal with a Biles II, a Yurchenko double pike, and a Cheng. She became the second woman after Věra Čáslavská to win two Olympic vault titles. In the Olympic all-around final, she finished first ahead of the rival who took silver and the defending champion. She became the third woman to win two Olympic all-around titles, and at age 27 she became the second-oldest woman to win the Olympic all-around gold medal. She lost the floor exercise gold by 0.033 points, which ended her streak of 10 consecutive international gold medals on floor exercise.

The Biles II vault, a Yurchenko double pike, has a difficulty value of 6.4, and as of November 2026 it is the only element in artistic gymnastics to receive the J rating. In May 2021, Simone Biles became the first woman to land a Yurchenko double pike vault in competition, and as of November 2026 the Yurchenko double pike that she first competed is the highest-valued vault in women's gymnastics. As of November 2026, her 2023 vault routine and 2024 floor routine are the most difficult ever performed. Biles is so good because she performs the most difficult skills with very few deductions for execution.

Simone Biles hired coach Laurent Landi, who had coached an Olympic teammate of hers, and coach Cecile Canqueteau-Landi helped rework her balance beam routine. As of November 2026, she has won 30 World Championship medals: 23 gold, 4 silver and 3 bronze, and she is the sole record holder for the most World Championship medals won by a gymnast. As of November 2026, she has also won 11 Olympic medals, 7 of them gold. In 2022, Simone Biles was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and she became the youngest person to receive it.

Words to know

• overhauled: completely redone
• apparatus: gym equipment
• deducted: taken off
• dismount: leaving the equipment