I keep going over it in my mind: Muhammad Ali, Sandy Koufax, Bo Jackson, Walter Payton, Michael Phelps, Mickey Mantle, Serena Williams, Roger Federer, Tiger Woods, Martina Navratilova, Willie Mays, Joe Montana, Michael Jordan, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Megan Rapinoe.

And so on. It’s a subjective list.

That doesn’t matter. This young woman may be the greatest athlete of my time. She had two bobbles on the balance beam in this week’s U.S. Championships. She’s human.

Then there are the moments when she’s very nearly superhuman. Here are three performances from the championships:

The vault:

https://youtu.be/IshWLKbVV4s


A tumbling pass during her floor routine:

https://youtu.be/P5CS9tUU18U


And the uneven bars:

https://youtu.be/ax8A9waNHOQ


The great golfer Bobby Jones once said this about Jack Nicklaus: “He plays a game with which I am not familiar.” Many, many years later, Nicklaus used the same sentence to describe Tiger Woods.

That’s about the right way to think about Simone Biles, I think.