Days after an injury scare, Simone Biles and her U.S. women's artistic gymnastics teammates took home the gold in the team finals. It was their first medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics and marked an incredible comeback for the history-making athlete and for Team USA.
Italy took second place, ending the finals with 165.494 points to Team USA's 171.296. It was Italy's first Olympic medal for women's gymnastics in almost a century. Brazil's team won bronze, finishing just shy of a point behind Italy, for their first medal ever in women's gymnastics.
The women's artistic gymnastics team final took place Tuesday at Bercy Arena and featured Biles along with her American teammates Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey and Sunisa Lee. It was an important contest for the American athletes, who are all returning to the Olympics this year after appearing in previous Games, and especially for Biles, who was forced to leave the competition in 2020 because of a dangerous mental block that prompted her to take herself out of the running.
Biles and Chiles took part in the uneven bars, vault, balance beam and floor exercise events, while Lee competed in every round except the vault, which was Carey's only event. Just one member of Team USA didn't participate in Tuesday's competition — 16-year-old Hezly Rivera, who's making her Olympic debut this year and still accepted a gold medal alongside her teammates at the awards ceremony.
Team USA was heavily favored to win the finals, after earning back-to-back gold at the Summer Games in London and Rio in 2012 and 2016, and capturing a silver medal in the team competition in Tokyo last time around.
After delivering standout routines on the vault, uneven bars and beam, Team USA performed their anticipated floor exercises in the gymnastics final's fourth and last rotation. An American trio of Olympic veterans was expected to command the floor, with Biles at the helm, and all three did their part to rise to the occasion.
Lee was the first American gymnast to perform on the floor and completed a strong routine with visible excitement as she left the mat. Her family cheered uproariously from the stands, as did the rest of the stadium. Lee earned an impressive 13.9 for the exercise, which is evaluated out of 14 points. Chiles nailed her floor routine, too, inching closer to that perfect score with 13.966.
Biles closed out the finals with a spectacular floor routine performed to a full-on standing ovation. It was arguably the most anticipated showing of Tuesday's team competition, and Biles delivered. Her routine included several of Biles' trademarked gymnastics moves, including her first namesake, a double layout with a half-twist, and a triple-double.
The exercise had solidified Team USA's victory before Biles' score was even revealed. She blew a kiss to the crowd as people chanted, "USA!"
Earlier, Biles' bar routine prompted roiling applause from a crowd that included Olympic swimming legend Michael Phelps and movie director Spike Lee. Lee and Biles both delivered solid performances on the balance beam that earned high marks, critically, after Chiles fell from the equipment during her beam routine, which came before theirs. Her fall was the only notable error from Team USA throughout the finals, where the American athletes brought top-tier routines that continued to push them ahead of their competitors in every round.
Team USA — which took top scores in the qualification session over the weekend — competed in the final against gymnasts from seven other teams that placed highly in the qualifiers: Italy, China, Brazil, Japan, Canada, Britain and Romania. The finals call for three gymnasts from each team to compete in each gymnastics category.
Lee is the reigning all-around champion. But in the team finals, all three gymnasts' scores are considered together. Those parameters make the final especially challenging, since they leave little room for error by any contending athlete, raising the stakes from qualifiers where all four athletes competed and the lowest-scoring athlete's marks were dropped from the team total.
Biles, 27, made her highly anticipated return last weekend in the qualifying rounds and dominated, despite a calf injury that caused her to limp. Women's gymnastics coach Cecille Landi, a former Olympian for France, told reporters after the qualifying session that Biles had tweaked her calf a few weeks ago and was on the mend.
The coach noted that Biles had no intention to leave the competition, saying, "Never in her mind."
Team USA finished Sunday's qualification session with an impressive score of 172.296, putting them at the front of the pack heading into the final, with Biles herself leaving qualifiers as the leading individual scorer across all of the competing teams.
Biles, heralded as the Greatest of All Time, or G.O.A.T., in gymnastics, is currently in her third Olympics. It's her first since experiencing the "twisties," a phenomenon where gymnasts lose their sense of place in the air, which forced her to drop out of multiple events during the Tokyo Olympics.
Tuesday's win makes Biles the most decorated American Olympic gymnast, surpassing Shannon Miller's seven-medal haul, with the team gold her eighth Olympic medal. That also ties her with Anton Heida, a 1904 Olympian, for the most gold medals earned by an American gymnast.
This story has been updated to correct information about the records of the teams from Italy and Brazil.
