ANTWERP, Belgium — When Simone Biles competes against the best gymnasts in the world, none of her peers can match the difficulty of her routines. Her reward is a cushion that keeps her glued to the top spot of the standings, even if she falters. Sometimes Biles has leaned on that baked-in advantage, and because of those difficulty scores, she has always prevailed. For more than a decade, she has won every all-around competition she has entered.

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The all-around final at the world championships Friday probably will be no different. Biles has soared ahead of the other contenders here, including reigning world champion Rebeca Andrade, the Brazilian who won a year ago when Biles hadn’t returned to competition. Biles’s commanding victories at major U.S. meets this summer and her so-far spectacular return to the international stage have proved that her dominance now is much like the past.

In the qualifying round at the world championships, the combined value of Biles’s difficulty scores (25.4) towered more than 1½ points above Andrade’s mark (23.8). The other top athletes — 2022 medalists Shilese Jones of the United States and Jessica Gadirova of Britain — earned at least a 23.0 total, and none of the other competitors surpassed 22.4.

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These difficulty scores give athletes an advantage before the competition begins — nobody more so than Biles — but that’s just part of the equation. The execution component of each score reflects how well the athlete performs: her technique and precision, no matter the complexity of the routine.

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And Biles usually shines in this area, too. It’s perhaps the underrated hallmark of her career. Her innovative elements steal the spotlight, but Biles rarely makes mistakes, and her fundamentals are pristine. She had an excellent showing during qualifying, and the sum of her execution scores on each apparatus was higher than every other athlete in the field — all gymnasts performing simpler routines.

Biles’s four routines earlier this week combined to earn a score of 33.965 in execution — a tiny margin ahead of Jones (33.932). Biles repeated the strong showing during Wednesday’s team final with an even higher mark (34.432) but a slightly lower all-around total because she didn’t perform her full repertoire of challenging skills.

For Biles, this has become the typical script — enormous difficulty with clean execution — and both have powered her rise, not just the jaw-dropping skills that no others have mastered. While Biles doesn’t always have the best overall execution, she usually lands near the top. Her difficulty provides a buffer that would soften the blow of errors, but she often doesn’t need it, a testament to her preparation.

“She doesn’t take mediocre work,” coach Cecile Landi said. “She pushes herself to be better every time.”

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That could soon lead to another world title, just as it has so often in the past. If Biles finishes on the podium in the all-around, she will receive her 34th world championships or Olympic medal and become the most decorated gymnast, male or female, in history — surpassing the previous record of Vitaly Scherbo, who represented the Soviet Union, the Unified Russian team and Belarus in the 1990s.

The open-ended scoring system, which was introduced in 2006 and includes marks for difficulty and execution, encourages innovation. Still, gymnasts can lean on their strengths. While Germany’s Pauline Schaefer-Betz had the lowest difficulty score among the qualifiers for the all-around final, her execution was the fourth best, behind only that of Biles, Jones and Gadirova. However, difficulty usually determines who is in serious medal contention because, for those with simpler routines, finishing on the podium depends on mistakes by others who entered with an advantage.

One of Biles’s largest deductions on the opening day of competition was because her coach stood on the mat for safety as she performed her difficult Yurchenko double pike vault. A controversial rule prescribes a half-point deduction, even though Biles’s coach doesn’t touch her as she flies through the air. That loss does not factor into the execution component of a score but rather falls into its own category known as neutral deductions, which also includes mistakes such as going out of bounds or not finishing a routine in the allotted time.

If these neutral deductions are subtracted from each gymnast’s all-around execution scores, Biles had the fourth-highest qualifying mark. Biles didn’t perform this vault, now known as the Biles II, during the team final. She instead chose the Cheng, which has a 5.6 difficulty score — much lower than the 6.4 of the Yurchenko double pike. But the difference is not as stark when the half-point neutral deduction is factored in.

Biles’s coach Laurent Landi said whether she performs her most difficult vault and he stands on the mat are daily decisions, so it’s not clear which element she will rely on in her final performances here.

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Among the field of gymnasts who qualified for the all-around final, Biles had the top marks for difficulty on vault (6.4), beam (6.3, tied with China’s Ou Yushan) and floor (6.7). These scores can fluctuate a bit depending on whether the judges award credit for each element and connection.

On bars, Biles’s weakest event, she performed an efficient routine and earned an 8.400 for execution during the qualifying round. Others had a more impressive array of skills, but Biles tied for the second-highest execution score. Her execution is critical to her ability to keep pace with other top contenders who have an edge in difficulty score.

But on each of the other apparatuses, Biles surges ahead of her peers. She has won gold medals at previous world championships on vault, beam and floor — and few others can come close to her highest scores, so she enters every all-around competition as the heavy favorite. For more than a decade, her dominance, which always starts with her difficult routines, has been complemented by superb execution and ultimately rewarded with a gold medal.