Japan won the men's team all-around competition for the first time since 1978, and the United States won the women's team all-around title for the third straight time. In the individual all-around competitions, Kōhei Uchimura and Simone Biles won their sixth and third successive title, respectively. Qualifying in thirteenth place, team Romania failed to automatically qualify to the Olympic Games for the first time since 1966.
As is traditional for any World Championships prior to the Olympic year, the Championships served as the first of two qualification rounds for artistic gymnasts to the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In the qualification round of Worlds, the top 8 teams in both MAG and WAG competitions received an automatic qualification berth to the Games. Teams placed 9–16th at the World Championships were invited to the 2016 Olympic Test Event in Rio and the top 4 teams from that event made up the 12 teams at the Olympics.
This was the first four-way tie in history for gold at a World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, but this is unlikely to happen again because the World Championships has instituted a tie-breaking procedure since then similar to the Olympics to prevent a situation like this from happening again.[original research?]
Simone Biles of the USA defended her beam title from 2014, becoming the first back-to-back world champion on beam. With her ninth career world championships gold medal, she tied the record held by Larisa Latynina, Gina Gogean, and Svetlana Khorkina. Sanne Wevers of the Netherlands and Pauline Schäfer of Germany won the first medals for their countries on the balance beam. Schäfer also qualified as an individual to the Olympics by medaling (she had not directly qualified as Germany failed to make the team final, but made the Test Event).[citation needed]
Due to an elbow injury prior to the final, Erika Fasana withdrew from the final, being replaced by Shang Chunsong. Additionally, Swiss gymnast Giulia Steingruber sustained a knee injury during the vault final the day before, rendering her unable to participate in the floor final.[8] She was replaced by Lieke Wevers of the Netherlands. Simone Biles won a record 10th career world championships gold medal.
