It was a bit of déjà vu, and a bit of rewriting history at the Bercy Arena on Tuesday for the women’s gymnastics team final.
Simone Biles waited her turn on the vault runway, and all eyes were on her. The last time she stood at the same position in an Olympic Games, in Tokyo in 2021, she took off, launched herself into the air and then lost herself. She couldn’t complete the flips and twists she had planned, and instead landed with a confused, and scared, look on her face. Following that vault, she withdrew from the team event because of “the twisties,” which prevented her from orienting herself in the air.
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“I’m not going to lie; it did cross my mind,” her coach, Cecile Landi said of the eerie repeat of Tokyo.
Then, as now, Team USA women competed first on vault before moving on to the other three events—uneven bars, balance beam, and floor. And then, as now, Biles was the last of the three U.S. gymnasts to go.
This time, however, Biles ran down the runway, pushed herself off the vault, completed the flips and twists she needed for the Cheng vault, and landed with a smile on her face.
“I was like, ‘whew,’ because there were no flashbacks or anything,” Biles said. “I did feel a lot of relief.”
As she came off the vault podium, Landi told her “‘Well, that’s a way better start than three years ago.’”
And it only got better from there. The U.S. led after the first rotation and maintained that lead over after all four events, finishing nearly six points ahead of silver medalists Italy and nearly seven points ahead of the bronze medalists from Brazil.
With four of the five members of the team—Biles, Jade Carey, Jordan Chiles, and Sunisa Lee—returning from that Tokyo team, they’ve been calling Paris their redemption tour. Redemption for the silver medal they earned in Tokyo instead of the gold they were expected to earn, and redemption for Biles, the most decorated gymnast in history, who had to make an unexpected exit from the event.
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“She wanted to rewrite her story again, and I think she had to finish on an good note,” said Landi.
Biles’ withdrawal from the Tokyo Olympics wasn’t just a shock to the gymnastics community. It sparked a necessary but often unspoken conversation about mental health in elite sports and beyond; the twisties are often the result of anxiety and pressure, and Biles has since talked about the stress she felt leading up to the Olympics in 2021, which were the first Games held during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Going into tonight, it felt different,” Biles said in Paris. “It was super exciting, we had fun and enjoyed each other’s time out there and just did our gymnastics.”
At the press conference following the event, Biles’ personality appeared, as she joked about the name for the squad (“I’m not going to say it,” she said of the risqué name) and chided Chiles for copying her every move. “Everything Jordan does she learned from me,” Biles said. “Watch me warm up and then watch Jordan’s.” When asked about the calf injury that led her to crawl at one point during the qualification round in Paris, she shot back “You all are so nosy, give me a break—it’s one thing after the next!”
Biles was definitely back.
Although the U.S. team—which also included newcomer Hezly Rivera, the youngest member of the Team USA Olympic squad—qualified with the highest score, the nerves were still on display. On beam, Chiles, who has traditionally been the most consistent performer who executes clean and solid routines, came off beam in her front mount, a skill that she’s admitted scares her.
Biles competed in all four events—uneven bars, beam, floor, and vault, although there had been some discussion about whether she would do so since she faced a heavy competition schedule, starting with qualification, then the team event, all-around, and three individual events. When asked about whether she wanted to compete on all four events, Landi said Biles told her “I am mentally prepared to do all four events and I’m ready.”
Chiles also competed on all four events and continued to add to Team USA’s scores in the remaining three. Although she finished with the fourth-highest score in the all-around qualification, the Olympic rules only allow two gymnasts from each country to compete, in an effort to ensure that countries with small teams can participate in that event. So for Chiles, the team event also doubled in a way as her all-around.
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“The two-per-country rule—I don’t like it,” she said with her characteristic candor. “But having the opportunity to do all the events definitely felt good and being part of a winning gold medal team with everything we have gone through has been an amazing experience.”
Normally dependable for clean and solid routines, Chiles had an uncharacteristic fall off the beam on her front mount, a skill she has said “scares” her. Reigning all-around champion Lee racked up points on uneven bars, beam, and floor, while newcomer Rivera sat out the entire competition, but gained valuable experience in being on the floor—and earning a gold—in her first Olympic Games. Carey, the reigning Olympic gold medalist on floor, struggled in qualification on that event—she stepped out of bounds once and then bounced backward and fell on another tumbling run, and those mistakes on the first day cost her the opportunity to compete in the event final to defen”d her title. The following day, she said she had “not been feeling well the past few days” and “[hadn’t] been able to eat or anything. I had, like, no energy today and didn’t really have a sense of what was going on in my head. So I just kind of wanted people to know that…there’s actually something wrong.”
Carey rallied for the team event, but only competed in vault, and did not compete on floor. In explaining that decision, Chellsie Memmel, the U.S. women’s team technical lead, said “My biggest thing is her safety. I didn’t want to put her out there in a situation where she wasn’t 100% confident that she could do that floor routine, and that’s why we made that decision—for safety.” Memmel wouldn’t detail what caused Carey’s uncharacteristic fall, and only said “she’s doing well.”
The win, while in some ways anticlimactic because it was so expected, still carries tremendous emotional weight for the team, given the unexpected circumstances of Tokyo. “We have definitely been through a lot,” said Lee of the journeys that each of them made to be part of the team—Biles in overcoming her Tokyo experience, Lee in recovering from kidney conditions that kept her from training for months, Chiles in building her confidence after almost quitting the sport before being invited by Biles to train with her before the Tokyo Games. Carey agreed: “I’m really proud of every single one of us in overcoming something before or during this trip to get to where we are today,” she said.
Beyond what it means for the five members of the team, the gold also represents a validation for sorts for a culture shift in gymnastics, a sport that in the U.S. is rebuilding itself after a sexual abuse scandal involving several Olympic team members, including Biles. It’s a much-needed change that is prioritizing respecting and empowering athletes over results and standings. “Gymnasts—they used to try to put us in a box,” Biles said. “So if you weren’t like this you weren’t successful. When I came around nobody really talked or laughed and all that stuff [at training camps]. But I was like, that’s not how I do gymnastics. So I’m going to continue to do the gymnastics that I know and love and the reason why I fell in love with the sport. Now we show off our personalities and really have fun, but know that once we get on the floor, we’ve put in the work and it shows in the results. And we don’t have to be put in a box any more.”
The historic squad continues the US’s strong showing in the sport at the Olympics.