PARIS — Simone Biles and the U.S. women's gymnastics team put on quite a show for all the celebrities in the crowd during Olympic qualifying at the Bercy Arena on Sunday. That despite a hobbled Biles, who appeared to tweak her lower left leg during floor warmups.
The Americans, who are heavy favorites for gold with Russia not here, finished with 172.296 points, putting them more than five points ahead of Italy. No team came close to that in qualifying. The U.S. women had five scores of 14.5 or higher, including Biles’ 15.8 on vault, and counted only one score lower than a 13.6. The team finals are Tuesday night.
Biles and Suni Lee, the reigning Olympic champion, will compete in the all-around final. Jordan Chiles finished fourth in the all-around standings, behind Biles, Lee and Rebeca Andrade, but she’ll miss the all-around finals because of the two-per-country rule.
Cecile Landi, one of Simone Biles' coaches, said after Sunday's qualifying session that she doesn't have concerns about Biles continuing to compete in Paris. Landi said it was Biles' left calf that was bothering her and said "she felt better at the end (of the session), yeah."
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Landi went on to say there was no discussion about Biles not continuing to compete on Sunday. "Never in her mind," Landi said. Landi also said there was no discussion about Biles doing just one vault or watering down her planned skills. Landi was then asked what Biles did with her leg: "Just a little pain in her calf. She felt it a little bit on floor. And we taped it to kind of (tighten) it up." Biles finished competing in the qualifying session with her left ankle taped.
Chellsie Memmel, the technical lead for the U.S. women, said: "What she was able to do ... was remarkable."
Biles and the rest of the Team USA women did not stop to speak to reporters in the mixed zone, as planned, but Biles did smile at assembled media.
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When she took the floor, her face was grim after having her ankle taped. Still, Biles opened with the triple-twisting, double somersault, better known as the Biles II. It’s both incredibly difficult and demands a lot from every part of her leg. She took a few steps out of bounds on the landing, but that is not unusual. She did the same at meets earlier this summer. The only noticeable difference in her routine was that she took out a stag leap at the end of the Biles I.
Still, Biles looked somber as she finished the routine, for which she earned a score of 14.600. She walked gingerly off the mat and took a seat on the steps at the edge of the podium. Cecile Landi, one of her coaches, came and asked her if she was OK, and Biles nodded. She continued to sit there until Laurent Landi, Cecile Landi’s husband and Biles’ other coach, came to her. He put his arm around her and she nodded as she whispered in her ear.
Finally, Biles got up and joined her teammates.
Biles spotted her parents when the Americans moved to vault, their next event, and she could be seen smiling and laughing again. After landing one practice vault, she motioned to teammates and then jokingly crawled partway toward the runway. Then she got up and hopped on her right leg. "I'm going to need a wheelchair," she said, according to the Peacock broadcast, though she appeared to be making light of the apparent left calf injury.
Biles then did a monster Yurchenko double pike, the most difficult vault being done by any woman, and nailed it. Yes, she took a big step back with her left foot to steady herself on the landing, but that’s a minor flaw. She scored a 15.8, including a 9.4 for execution. She then followed it with the second-hardest vault, a Cheng, taking another hop back on the landing. But Biles was visibly limping as she walked off the podium, and hopped down the steps using only her right foot.
Simone Biles absolutely crushed her routine on balance beam, the U.S. women's first event. Whether it was her aerial series or individual flips, she did them with more ease and grace than most people walk on flat ground. And she was far from the ground, mind you, 4 feet off on a balance beam that is a mere 4 inches wide.
When she landed her dismount, taking a small hop back, a wide grin crossed Biles' face and coach Cecile Landi jumped up in the air. She scored a 14.733 and few, if any, other gymnasts will be able to match that the rest of the day.
And with that, she and the Americans were off and running. There are always some nerves before the first event, especially when it's balance beam. Biles was the last of the Americans to go on beam, and she looked somewhat nervous as she watched them compete. As she waited for Suni Lee's score to post, Biles stood at the edge of the beam, blowing out her breath and saying a few last words to herself. But once she was on the beam, she was her usual spectacular self.
The U.S. had three women competing in all four events Sunday, but only two per country can make the all-around final. And with Simone Biles' brilliance, that meant Suni Lee and Jordan Chiles were essentially competing against one another for a single spot.
Chiles was narrowly ahead of Lee going into the group's final rotation, uneven bars — but unfortunately for her, that happens to be Lee's best event. And the reigning Olympic all-around champion delivered. In a pressure-packed moment, she registered a score of 14.866 — six-tenths better than Chiles — to squeak into the second all-around qualification spot.
"We knew it was going to be a battle going in, and it really was. Back and forth throughout the day," U.S. women's technical lead Chellsie Memmel said. "... I know it's going to sting (for Chiles). It's going to take time."
At the end of the second rotation, Biles, Lee and Chiles occupied the top three spots in the all-around standings.
U.S. gymnast Jade Carey said she has been fighting an undisclosed illness in recent days, citing the bug as the reason for her uncharacteristically poor performance on floor exercise in Sunday's gymnastics qualifying round at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Carey, 24, told Olympics.com that she hasn't "been able to eat or anything" over the past few days due to the illness and wanted to disclose the issue so fans didn't assume she was being affected by nerves. USA Gymnastics had previously announced that her coach and father, Brian Carey, missed the team's podium training Thursday because he was not feeling well.
"I had, like, no energy today and didn't really have a sense of what was going on in my head," Carey told Olympics.com. "So, I just kind of wanted people to know that so, they know that there's actually something wrong."
Suni Lee and Jordan Chiles competed alongside Simone Biles to try to qualify for the all-around. That meant Jade Carey and Hezly Rivera, at 16 the only member of the team who isn’t a returning Olympian, did two events apiece: Carey on vault and floor exercise, where she’s the reigning Olympic champion, and Rivera on uneven bars and balance beam.
Suni Lee went third on balance beam for the U.S., ditching the mount that's been giving her trouble and going to the straddle. Lee scored a 14.033.
If any team has a chance to finish without shouting distance of the U.S. women in Tuesday's team final, it's expected to be Brazil. Though the Brazilians will need to improve on their performance in qualifying to make that a reality.
Led by reigning all-around Olympic silver medalist Rebeca Andrade, Brazil qualified comfortably for the final but placed a surprising fourth, behind Italy and China in addition to Team USA. The three countries were separated by less than 0.5 points in Sunday's qualification round — and all three finished more than five full points behind the U.S.
Japan, Canada, Great Britain and Romania placed fifth through eighth, respectively, to also punch their tickets to the team final.
A who’s who of A-list celebs – Tom Cruise, Anna Wintour and Lady Gaga, just to name a few – were on hand to watch Biles, reigning Olympic champion Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey and Hezly Rivera. Even the Americans were impressed, their mouths dropping open when the celebrities were shown on the Jumbotron.
As they rotated to floor, Simone Biles and company spotted Snoop Dogg dancing in the front row. Then Biles and Jordan Chiles started dancing. Needless to say, the Olympics are way more fun with fans.
A gymnastics routine gets two scores: One for difficulty, also known as the D score or start value, and one for execution. Every gymnastics skill has a numerical value, and the D score is the sum total of the skills in a routine. The execution score, or E score, reflects how well the skills were done. A gymnast starts with a 10.0, and deductions for flaws and form errors are taken from there. Add the D and E scores together, and that’s your total for an apparatus. (Vault scores will always be higher because it’s a single skill.)
Simone Biles is the most-decorated gymnast of all time, with 37 medals at the world championships and Olympics. To put that in perspective, that's more than any men's team has. Combined. China's initial five-man team had 37 medals, but they made a switch before qualifying and now only have 34. Oh, the men do two more events than the women do, too. Which means Biles has amassed her collection despite having fewer opportunities to do so.
Every gymnast, whether they’re competing as part of a team or as an individual, has to go through qualifying. How many events they do depends both on whether they’re trying to make the all-around final and, if their country is one of the 12 in the team competition, where they’re needed most.
Four gymnasts compete on each event in qualifying, and teams can drop their lowest score. The top eight teams after qualifying advance to Tuesday’s team final, where scores start over, and the U.S. women are the heavy favorites to win gold.
The top 24 in the individual all-around make Thursday's final, where Biles is expected to become only the third woman, and first since 1968, to win a second Olympic title. The top eight gymnasts on each event advance to the event finals, which are Aug. 3-5.
But there is a limit of two gymnasts per country in the all-around and each event final, meaning there is likely to be at least one American who will get sidelined.
Simone Biles saves her coaches time. And headaches. When the greatest gymnast the sport has ever seen is grinding away every day, it makes it a little hard for anyone else to slack off. When one of the world’s most famous athletes is at the gym before most people have had their coffee or brushed their teeth, the other gymnasts better be up and at ‘em early, too.
And if Biles can pick herself up after the entire world has had a front-row seat to her lowest moment, bouncing back from a bad meet seems a little more doable.
"Training with Simone is, like, once in a lifetime," said Joscelyn Roberson, who moved to WCC after the US championships in 2022. "She's always so bubbly in the gym. Plus, she can hit. All the time. Like, she never has a bad day, which is insane to me." Read about where Simone Biles trains and what it's like to train with her.
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