Sheesh! Simone biles reveals reason why she couldn’t make it to the top:đ© Simone Biles and Suni Lee place 5th and 6th in the balance beam final after they fell during their routines. Italyâs Alice DâAmato took home the gold.
Sheesh! Simone biles reveals reason why she couldn’t make it to the top:đ© Simone Biles and Suni Lee place 5th and 6th in the balance beam final after they fell during their routines. Italyâs Alice DâAmato took home the gold.
Simone Biles shows sheâs human on âwildâ final day of Paris gymnastics
Simone Biles (left) and Jordan Chiles (right) bow to gold medalist Rebeca Andrade of Brazil after the floor exercise.
Simone Biles (left) and Jordan Chiles (right) bow to gold medalist Rebeca Andrade of Brazil after the floor exercise.
Simone Biles, the star of these Olympics, invincible, indomitable, inhuman, was something less on a crazy final day of the womenâs gymnastics competition at Bercy Arena. She fell on the balance beam and fell out of medal contention, the first time thatâs happened in an individual apparatus final at an Olympics or world championship. She stepped out of bounds on two tumbling passes during her floor routine and finished second for the first time.
There also was a scoring inquiry that knocked two Romanians off the podium. And donât forget about the shushing controversy.
âToday,â Biles said, âhas been absolutely wild.â
Just when you think womenâs gymnastics is so predictable and formulaic â basically, Biles wins everything â we got two Italians on the podium in beam and a Brazilian with gold in floor. And Biles, with seven, falls short in her quest to equal swimmer Katie Ledeckyâs record nine gold medals.
âObviously it wasnât my best performances, but at the end of the day, whoever medaled, medaled,â said Biles, who now has seven gold and 11 total medals. âThatâs what is so exciting, because you just never know with gymnastics. Iâm not very upset or anything at my performance at the Olympics. Iâm actually very happy, proud and even more excited that itâs over, the stress of it.â
It was the sixth competition day for Biles, who still had her lower left leg wrapped tightly from a calf injury suffered during the team preliminaries. The fatigue showed.
First, the beam.
U.S. teammate Suni Lee slipped on a backward aerial pass, briefly straddled the four-inch-wide beam and hit the floor. Biles hopped up a few minutes later and fell on a similar maneuver.
Both received scores of 13.100, well behind Italyâs Alice DâAmato in first at 14.366 and nearly a point out of the bronze medal.
In team or all-around competitions, there is always music in the arena from the adjacent floor exercise. But individual apparatus finals are held one by one, and organizers declined requests from athletes to play background music, as most gymnastics venues typically do.
âHonestly, we do better in environments when we have music going on because it feels almost like practice,â Biles said. âToday, you could hear some of the Android ring tones going off, the photo (camera) clickers. Youâre trying to stay in your zone. Then people start cheering, and the shushing gets louder. But really, they should be shushed because