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Delaware’s Morgan Hurd places second in U.S. Gymnastics Championships

Delaware's Morgan Hurd is the reigning world champion.

Morgan Hurd competes on the balance beam at the U.S. Gymnastics Championships, Sunday, Aug. 19, 2018, in Boston. (AP Photo/)
Morgan Hurd competes on the balance beam at the U.S. Gymnastics Championships, Sunday, Aug. 19, 2018, in Boston. (AP Photo/)Read moreElise Amendola / AP
    by Philly.com Staff
    Published 

Morgan Hurd, the reigning world champion, finished six points behind Olympic champion Simone Biles in the all-around competition at the U.S. Gymnastics Championships in Boston on Sunday.

Biles easily won her fifth U.S. women's gymnastics title, winning all four events as well as the all-around in a dominant performance that showcased the ever-widening chasm between her and the rest of her sport.

The 21-year-old Biles posted a two-day total of 119.850. 17-year-old Hurd, who lives in Middletown, Del., and trains in Newark, posted a score of 113.300. Biles' margin of victory was greater than the gap between Hurd and 11th-place finisher Jordan Chiles.

Hurd won the all-around title at the World Championships in October 2017 in Montreal. The favorite, U.S. Champion Ragan Smith, suffered an injury in warmups, and Biles was taking time off after her impressive showing at the Rio Olympics in 2016. Hurd stepped up and narrowly edged out Canada's Ellie Black to win gold.

The title made Hurd just the fourth Delaware resident to win an individual world title in any sport, according to Wilmington's Delaware Sports Museum and Hall of Fame.

>> READ MORE: Morgan Hurd, Delaware's unique (and bespectacled) gymnastics world champion

Biles is the second woman to win nationals five times, joining Clara Schroth Lomady, who won six between 1945 and 1952. Biles also became the first woman since three-time Olympian Dominique Dawes in 1994 to wind up first on floor exercise, balance beam, vault and uneven bars.

Biles will get a chance to add to her 14 world championship medals when she leads Team USA to Qatar in October. Hurd, third-place finisher Riley McCusker and vault specialist Jordan Chiles figure to be on the plane too. Whoever earns the fifth spot will join a team that be heavily favored to continue its international supremacy.

The Americans have won every major international team competition since the 2011 world championships, a run that started two years before Biles rose to prominence and one that figures to continue indefinitely with Biles doing things no gymnast has ever done.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.