“Simone Biles needs to score a 7.591 for USA to bring home the gold,” the announcer said as she prepared to take the floor exercise for Team USA’s final performance in the team finals Tuesday night in Rio. “Can she pull it off?”
His sarcasm summed up Team USA’s dominance as the women’s gymnastics team captured their third team gold.
They came into the finals from a qualifying round that saw them nearly ten full points ahead of their nearest competitor. And in order for Biles to lose the gold medal for her team, she would have had to fall – and land out of bounds – on just about every single flip of her action packed routine.
“She’s probably going to double that,” the announcer said. Biles did that, and then some, with her performance that another announcer described as “one of the most difficult pieces of gymnastics I’ve ever seen.”
Biles delivered the type of routine that is typically associated with a heartwarming, back- from-the-brink-of-defeat to team victory as the 19-year-old earned her first Olympic gold medal. It was the only piece of hardware missing from her four-year run of supreme domination in women’s gymnastics.
The crowd erupted after her first tumbling passage. And she never gave them a reason to calm down.
Biles15.8 score illustrated that even the judges – who were extremely conservative and unforgiving with their scoring – had been blown away by her performance.
Though Biles has been the talk of gymnastics, and the Olympics in general, all five of her teammates gave the performance of their lives.
Just before Biles took to the mat, her teammate Aly Raisman, floor exercise reigning Olympic champion, compelled the crowd to chant “Aly” and “USA” following her breathtaking performance. “We had a lot of pressure coming in but I think we handled it pretty well,” said Raisman. “I’m at a loss for words.”
In her second Olympics, Raisman will return Thursday to compete in the all-round against Biles, who is heavily favored to win.
With Biles, reigning Olympic all-round champion Gabby Douglas and 16-year-old Lauren Hernandez, the 2016 Olympic champion team is also the most diverse in the history of Team USA gymnastics.
Douglas became the first African-American woman to win all-round gold at the 2012 Games in London – where she and Raisman became the first women gymnasts to win three gold medals in a single Olympic Games.
Though she posted the third best time overall in the qualifying rounds, Douglas was edged out because of the rule that only allows two individuals per team to advance to the all-round finals.
Biles is also expected to be the first gymnast of any color – male or female – to win five gold medals in a single Olympic Games when the gymnastics competition resumes with the individual and all-round finals.
After their team win, the young women revealed the name they selected for the team – which also includes Madison Kocian.
“We called ourselves the ‘final five’ because there will only be four girls next time and because of Martha (coach Karolyi) finishing after this,” Hernandez said.
Along with the team gold, Karolyi will probably leave the Olympic stage with a blaze of glory like no other coach in women’s gymnastics thanks to the “Final Five” – and the record-breaking potential of Biles.
Information from CNN contributed to this report.
