They’ve done it: Team USA’s women’s gymnastics squad has won gold in the team final, reclaiming their apex position in the event after taking silver in Tokyo.
Those who competed on Tuesday: Captain Simone Biles, Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles (whose floor routine had the crowd screaming), and Jade Carey. (Hezly Rivera is also on the team, but did not participate.) Interestingly, both Biles and Lee hold gold medals in the individual all-around, too (the former from Rio de Janeiro, the latter from Tokyo). This marks the first time in Olympic history that a women’s team included two such victors.
The spirits in the City of Light on Tuesday were sky-high—though maybe not quite as high as one of Biles’s tumbling leaps on floor—with throngs of fans, many in red-white-and-blue-themed makeup and clothes, filling Paris’s Bercy Arena. While US fans were the loudest inside, the Brazilian contingency also turned out. (And shout-out to Team Brazil, which came from sixth place in the final round to ultimately nab the bronze; Rebeca Andrade had an excellent vault that did the trick.)
This marquee contest—traditionally one of the Games’ most anticipated—sees three athletes from each qualifying nation compete across women’s gymnastics’ four events: vault, uneven bars, balance beam, and the floor exercise. All three scores count. All are tallied up. The most points win. It’s high-stakes stuff, and, with each and every score included, there’s little margin for error. Team USA was in the lead from the very first rotation.
There were very few stumbles. The biggest mistake (and gasp from the stands) came with Chiles’s fall off the beam at the top of her routine–but it didn’t make a difference, in the end.
Dazzling in their custom leotards, which took two years to make and cost roughly $3,000 per piece, Biles and co. flew and flipped to new heights—and secured a historic gold in the process.
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