Simone Biles soared in Paris and when she finally returned to earth, she was wrapped up in gold, writes RIATH AL-SAMARRAI

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In the end, all they could do was clap their chalked hands and laugh. That went for the Brazilian and the American in their doomed pursuit and it went to deeper shades of awe for anyone else fortunate enough to witness a true wonder of the sporting world on Thursday night.

That Simone Biles is once more the Olympic all-around champion is no great surprise, but, with this 4ft 8ins giant, the sense of amazement doesn’t so much creep up on you as slap your face with a tiny hand.

You can expect greatness and you can predict results but you cannot possibly prepare for how astonishing it will look when a human embarrasses the birds with her gift of flight.

She vaulted close to perfection. She twisted the beam, her nemesis not so long ago, into a child’s toy. And she wiped the floor with the best gymnasts in the world to such an extent that a slightly botched turn on the uneven bars did not matter a jot.

By the time the scores were finalised, shortly before 8.30pm local time, we had weaved our way to a magnificently familiar conclusion: Simone Biles, miles better than the rest.

USA Olympic star Simone Biles won gold in the women's all-around gymnastics final

Biles put in a simply stunning display to win her sixth Olympic gold and ninth medal in total

 The sparking goat necklace she then revealed was just about right for the Greatest Of All Time and the numbers entirely legitimise the brag.

Chief among them is that this sixth Olympic gold, her second of the week after the team victory on Tuesday, took her beyond Nadia Comaneci and out alone in possession of the Games record for female gymnasts. Of marginally less significance, Biles is also the first woman since 1968 to win the all-around crown twice.

And how she did it in her accumulation of 59.131 points. The next best, Rebeca Andrade of Brazil, the Tokyo silver medallist, was a full 1.119 points behind. That’s huge in these halls. Then there was Biles’s team-mate, Sunisa Lee, 2.666 astern.

Now for some necessary context, because Biles was here with a point to prove and a redemption to achieve.

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It has been three years since Tokyo went so awfully wrong for her, most conspicuously with an attack of the twisties – a bizarrely jolly term for losing your sense of orientation when upside down. That is terrifying in such a dangerous workplace and for Biles a lot of therapy has been needed, and is still needed, to correct it. To set it right. To put her back in the sky.

‘Three years ago I never thought I’d set foot on a gymnastics floor again because of everything that happened,’ said Biles, who still has three medals to challenge for in Paris.

‘Even this morning at 7am I spoke to my therapist. I never thought I’d be on a world stage again. I’m super proud of my performance and the fight I’ve had to get back competing on the world stage. I couldn't be prouder.’

The victory, which only briefly seemed in jeopardy, looked on the cards from the first rotation. In Biles’s case that meant the vault.

We will skirt the advanced mathematics with which these matters are calculated but here’s an illustration of what dominance looks like – Andrade, who won the individual vault title in Tokyo, set herself a difficulty tariff of five and was close to perfect in execution. She scored 15.100 and that’s an excellent return.

Biles? Her Yurchenko double pike, also known as the Biles II, carried a difficulty of 6.4, because she simply does things the others cannot. With a score 15.766 she was already flipping her way to a 0.666 lead. Devilishly good.

Next up was the uneven bars, her weakest apparatus and, it turns out, her only biggest blip. A poor transition from high to low forced her to lose speed, so her 13.733 dropped Biles briefly to third.

 Biles soared and when she returned to earth, she was wrapped in a flag and in another medal 

Even silver medalist Rebeca Andrade could only smile as she watched Biles perform her magic

The risk at that point was needing to push beyond comfort on the beam - that 10cm wide strip of wood was her tool of torture when the twisties struck, so not a good spot for nerves. But a score of 14.566 had her back in the lead over Andrade and safely on firm ground.

It was at the moment that Andrade reached out and patted her on the back. She knew what they all knew – if you are to catch Biles, you will not do it on the floor. Not when she reaches higher into the air than any athlete to ever live. Needing around 14 points to win, a long way within her comfort zone, she was immense, almost spotless, in scoring 15.066.

In the minute or so that it took the digits to be read out, no one bothered with the notion of suspense. Not Andrade and not Lee, and same goes for Alice Kinsella and Georgia-Mae Fenton, the Brits who finished 12th and 18th respectively.

Some things are obvious. Some things do not need numbers. Some messages do not need necklaces. She is the greatest and no amount of medals seem able to weigh her down.