Overcoming a fall earlier in the day on the balance beam and a tumble during warmups that potentially exacerbated a left-calf injury, Simone Biles added another piece of hardware to her trophy case with a silver medal in the floor exercise to wrap up the gymnastics portion of the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade took the gold medal with a score of 14.166 — 0.33 points higher than Biles’ mark of 14.133.
Fellow American Jordan Chiles, who was the last gymnast to go in the competition, dramatically took bronze following an official inquiry that bumped up her score from fifth place at 13.666 to 13.766, which moved her past two Romanians in Sabrina Maneca-Voinea and Ava Barbosu — the latter missing out on the bronze medal after initially believing that she made the podium.
The floor had always been Biles’ trademark event and her routine’s difficulty garnered a score of 6.9 — a considerable 0.7 points higher than the next-toughest routine, which belonged to Romania’s Sabrina Maneca-Voinea. For comparison’s sake, Andrade’s routine had a difficulty of 6.1 while Chiles was at a 5.8.
Such a high difficulty provided an added cushion for Biles to make the podium, but two landing deductions that carried her out of bounds during her routine ultimately knocked her off the top spot. Before her routine even began, though, Biles had the gymnastics world holding its collective breath. During a warm-up run in between competitors, she landed awkwardly and appeared to be favoring her left leg after a fall, which has been wrapped throughout the Games.
Less than 10 minutes later, she still put forth a strong routine despite the pain to garner an execution score of 7.833 with a 0.6-point deduction for those two landings that carried her out of bounds, creating that final score of 14.133 and putting her second with Andrade already having put forth her gold-medal-winning performance.
Biles and Suni Lee — who combined to win six medals at these 2024 Games — failed to make the podium on the balance beam, which led off gymnastics action on Monday.
Both Americans fell during their routines, which gave them identical scores of 13.100 and set up a fifth and sixth finish in the field of eight. Biles had previously won bronze on the beam at the 2016 Games in Rio and the 2020 Tokyo Games.
Alice D’Amato won Italy’s first-ever gold medal on the balance beam with a score of 14.2366. In fact, Italy had never won a medal of any kind at this event and they got two on Monday when Manila Esposito took bronze. China’s Zhou Yaqin earned silver with a score of 14.100.
Biles was the penultimate gymnast to go on the beam — she strumbled midway through her routine and ultimately hopped off the beam to the shock of the crowd at the sold-out Bercy Arena, which included star spectators such as Tom Brady and Stephen Curry. This was her first event at the Paris Games in which she did not win the gold medal.
It opened the door for Andrade to snag a gold over Biles after finishing behind her and the Americans on multiple occasions, but a disjointed routine only yielded a fourth-place finish.
“We were both kind of annoyed just because we know what we’re capable of,” Lee said after the event. “We weren’t able to get it done today, but [Biles] still has floor and she’s the G.O.A.T., so she’ll be amazing.”
Andrade ultimately was able to snag a gold over Biles hours later, giving her a sixth-ever Olympic medal, a fourth medal in Paris, and a second-ever gold after winning top spot in the vault at Tokyo 2020.
Whether or not this is Biles’ final event at an Olympics remains to be seen. The 27-year-old — who is already at an advanced age in the world of elite gymnastics — dodged questions about her future at the competition with the Summer Games being held in Los Angeles in 2028.
Biles’ silver brings her up to 11 Olympic medals over three editions of the Games, which included Parisian golds in the team all-around, individual all-around, and vault.
For more on Simone Biles, Jordan Chiles, and the Olympics, visit AMNY.com
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