Simone Biles leads team USA back to Olympic gold
The 27-year-old Biles was fighting through a calf injury but also returning to the setting of one of the worst events of her life: an Olympic women’s team final
Against all expectations, including her own, Simone Biles was staring down the vault runway at another Olympic Games, under the same bright lights and the same five rings that had been the setting in 2021 of her lowest moment in gymnastics.
The last time she began this event, it went so spectacularly wrong that she pulled herself out of the team final.
This time, on the first rotation of the night, Biles sprinted at the table, propelled herself high into the air — and twisted. It wasn’t the same vault she’d tried in Tokyo. This one was even harder. And when she landed, near perfectly save for a small hop, she left no doubt.
Simone Biles and the United States were all the way back — and storming to Olympic gold.
Biles capped it all with an explosive routine in the last floor exercise of the night, punctuating her display with a triple-twisting double somersault, the move that only she has performed in competition.
By then, the U.S. lead was already so commanding that even before she finished, Biles and her teammates Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey and Hezly Rivera knew they had restored the U.S. to its rightful place atop the sport.
With every other gymnast done for the night, all eyes were trained on Biles on the floor. She took the floor to a deafening roar. She exited it blowing a kiss and waving to the crowd.
“We did it,” she said afterwards.
Once Biles securely landed that first vault, the tensions for the U.S. had been settled.
Biles burst into laughter after the opening rotation when the big screen at Bercy Arena showed her yawning and danced along with her teammates as they moved between events in front of a raucous crowd waving American flags.
The rest of the night wasn’t so much a competition as a coronation. For Biles, it marked a breathtaking climb back to the top of her sport. In the months after Tokyo, merely watching other gymnasts twist on television made her want to throw up. She’s 27 now, the gymnastics equivalent of a geriatric. And though she posted the highest individual all-round score in qualifications, she hobbled through a calf injury.
All of which meant it was entirely unclear what would happen here — and that Biles was under more pressure than she had been even in Tokyo. Just like then, the U.S. was starting the women’s team final on vault, the apparatus where everything had once unravelled.
This time, she had to contend with the knowledge that again, the U.S. team needed her monster scores on every apparatus to win. Behind her, there was little backup. Biles and her training mate Chiles were put up on all four events, and Lee, the Olympic all-round champion, on balance beam, uneven bars and the floor exercise. Carey, the reigning Olympic floor exercise champion, had been sick for a week and performed only on the vault. Rivera, a 16-year-old, sat the night out after a shaky showing during qualifications.
That left just one question: Would Biles hold up in the pressure cooker of the Olympics?
The answer was a resounding yes. The win gave Biles her eighth Olympic medal and fifth gold, adding to her record tally of 38 medals across the Summer Games and the World Championships.
She wasn’t the only American star who considered the Paris Games an opportunity for redemption.
After her surprise triumph in the Olympic all-round competition in Tokyo, Lee was diagnosed with two kidney diseases that had kept her largely on the sidelines of American gymnastics all through last year.
It was less than two months ago that the 21-year-old Lee returned to performing in all four events at the same competition for the first time. She notched high scores for the U.S. on uneven bars and balance beam here, while shoring up the gold medal on floor.
But the final moment of the night belonged to Biles, who had even her closest competitors marvelling throughout the night.
As soon as her floor routine was over, it was official: Biles and the gymnasts of Team USA had reclaimed their place atop the sport.
The Wall Street Journal
