Show them the medals! US women could rake in hardware at world gymnastics championships

ANTWERP, Belgium — Hope the Americans left room in their luggage.

The Americans were atop the standings in everything but uneven bars when two days of qualifying wrapped up Monday at the world gymnastics championships. The team competition. All-around. Vault, balance beam and floor exercise.

Not only that, they’ll have two gymnasts in every individual final. Could have had more, too, if not for the International Gymnastics Federation’s stupid two-per-country rule.

“On the whole, for the team, very very good,” Laurent Landi, who coaches Simone Biles and Joscelyn Roberson, said after the U.S. women’s qualifying session Sunday.

Hard to be much better.

The U.S. women’s score of 171.395 was more than five points ahead of Britain, last year’s silver medalists. Scoring starts from scratch in the team finals and there’s no dropping the lowest score, as there is in qualifying. But it’s unlikely anyone is going to get close to the Americans, let alone deny them what would be a record seventh consecutive team title in Wednesday’s final.

The U.S. women, who’ve won every team title at worlds going back to 2011, currently share that record with China’s men.

This is only the fourth competition for Biles since the Tokyo Olympics, where she was forced to withdraw from all but one final because a case of “the twisties” caused her to lose her sense of where she was in the air. Yet she looks as good as she ever has.

She's almost 2 points ahead of fellow American Shilese Jones in the all-around, and also had the top scores on vault, balance beam and floor exercise. She was fifth on uneven bars, her “weakest” event.

Should Biles win a medal in the team and all-around competition, she’d have 34 at the world championships and Olympics, making her the most-decorated gymnast of all time, male or female.

And that’s not the only history she can make.

By qualifying for every event final, Biles can duplicate her feat from the 2018 world championships, where she won six medals. It was the first time since Romania’s Daniela Silivas at the 1988 Olympics that a woman had medaled on every single event at a major international competition.

Biles won four golds, a silver and a bronze at those world championships.

In addition to the all-around, Jones made the bars, beam and floor finals. She had the highest score on bars until the very last subdivision, when China’s Qiu Qiyuan edged her by a mere 0.067 points.

“I feel like we’ve been here for so long now, training routine after routine. To get out there and hit four more routines just felt great,” Jones said Sunday night. “There’s good with the bad, but I’m excited to move onto the all-around and then, hopefully, some finals.”

Roberson, who is making her worlds debut here, made the vault final with the sixth-highest score.

“I feel like it went as good as it could have,” Roberson said Sunday night.

The only way it could have gone better for the Americans is if the FIG dropped the rule limiting countries to two gymnasts in each individual final. If that rule wasn’t in place, Leanne Wong would have made the all-around final and Skye Blakely would have made the bars final.

It’s not nice to be greedy, however. Especially since the Americans will still be coming home with plenty of hardware.

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on social media @nrarmour.