By: Hannah Zhang
Simone Biles is regarded by many as one of the greatest gymnasts of all time, with a whopping 37 world and Olympic medals combined. And she proved this once again by winning yet another gold medal and becoming the oldest American gymnast to ever do so, at 27 years old. On 1st August, 2024, the gymnast bagged her second career Olympic all-around title at the Paris Olympics with more than a full point ahead of second place.
During the individual all-around competition, Biles performed the most difficult vault in the world, the Yurchenko double pike, which gave her a 0.8 point lead ahead of Rebeca Andrade of Brazil. Even with such a strong start, Andrade was able to keep Biles on her toes throughout the rest of the competition, and went on to finish second.
As Biles herself states in Team USA after deciding to pull off the Yurchenko double pike, “I wasn’t planning on it, but I just knew how phenomenal of an athlete she [Andrade] is. Each event we’re similar in scores. I was like, okay, I think I have to bring out the big guns this time.”
Biles made a crucial mistake with one of her release moves on the uneven bars which set her back to third place. The error resulted in a much lower score of 13.733, compared to what should have been a 14 or 15. Meanwhile, Biles’ teammate, Suni Lee, had started to make her way up the leaderboard.
After refocusing herself, Biles executed a beam routine that put her back in first, with Andrade only 0.166 points behind. This is a much smaller lead than Biles is used to, and as she says, “[The tight lead] definitely put me on my toes, and it brought out the best athlete in myself. I’m excited and proud to compete with her [Andrade] but… I was getting uncomfortable.”
After her successful pull back into the lead, Biles performed her iconic floor routine to secure her position as the gold medalist. Andrade stepped out of bounds during her routine, managing to place silver. In the meantime, Suni Lee pulled off a solid routine that gave her bronze, and guaranteed two spots on the podium for the United States.
It seemed that both Biles and Lee were aware of this even before it was announced. Both were waiting on the sidelines with an American flag in hand for their final scores to be broadcasted.