- Biles takes floor silver behind Andrade after costly mistakes
- Japan’s Oka wins third gold and a bronze
- D’Amato grabs balance beam gold with clean performance
PARIS — It definitely was not the ending Simone Biles was expecting as she was surprisingly upstaged in the floor exercise final by Brazilian gymnast Rebeca Andrade — but a silver medal on Monday capped the American’s remarkable Olympic comeback.
Stepping out of bounds with both feet at the end of two of her four tumbling passes meant she missed out on the top prize in the floor final, with the six tenths of a point penalty she incurred making the difference between gold and silver.
That score of 14.133 did not stop Biles from earning an 11th Olympic medal.
The final day of the artistic gymnastics program also saw Biles suffer disappointment in the balance beam final as she finished fifth after slipping off the 10-cm wide apparatus.
Italy won their first ever Olympic title in women’s gymnastics when Alice D’Amato emerged as the surprise winner in a beam competition where four of the eight finalists suffered falls. The celebrations did not end there for Italians, with D’Amato’s compatriot Manila Esposito scooping bronze behind Chinese silver medalist Zhou Yaqin.
Like Biles, Japanese sensation Shinnosuke Oka will be heading home with four Olympic medals, with three of them being glittering gold.
The 20-year-old’s Games breakthrough continued as he finished with the bronze in the parallel bars, behind back-to-back Olympic champion Zou Jingyuan and Ukrainian silver medalist Illia Kovtun.
Zou handed China their second gymnastics gold of the Games, while Kovtun earned Ukraine their first podium finish.
Just two hours later Oka emerged triumphant with his gravity defying routine on the horizontal bar, a final that was riddled with errors.
Colombian teenager Angel Barajas took silver and Taiwan’s Tang Chia-hung and China’s Zhang Boheng shared bronze despite botched performances.
Biles bows to Andrade
With the hundreds of TV and still cameras capturing her every move, there was no doubt that Biles was the standout star of the Paris Olympics.
But she is also the ultimate teammate and rival.
She whopped with joy and hugged fellow American Jordan Chiles tightly after her friend was promoted from fifth to the bronze-medal position when her score was upgraded to 13.766 following a successful enquiry submitted by the Americans right at the end of the floor exercise competition.
Biles, the world’s most decorated gymnast with 41 world and Olympic medals, admitted that exhaustion had started to creep in on the final day of a grueling competition.
“Obviously wasn’t my best performances but at the end of the day, whoever medaled, medaled,” she said.
“I’m not very upset or anything about my performance at the Olympics. I’m actually very happy, proud and even more excited that it’s over.”
Biles was heavily favored coming into the floor final given the difficulty of her high-flying floor routine but paid the price for miscuing two of her landings, which meant she lost out on winning a fourth gold medal of these Games.
Biles’ routine got off to a promising start when she nailed her triple twisting double back but the power she generates during the tumbling sequences left her completely stepping out of bounds on her next attempt.
She again found herself out of the marked area on her final pass.
The flawed performance left her anxiously looking up at the scoreboard and when her mark flashed up, she found her name below Andrade’s on the standings. She lost the gold medal by just 0.033 of a point.
Andrade claimed the top prize for producing a near flawless, albeit less difficult, display which was rewarded with a score of 14.166 from the judges.
Proving there were no hard feelings, a beaming Biles then joined Chiles in hailing the new Olympic floor exercise queen.
The American duo turned to face Andrade and then bowed to her from the lower platforms of the podium as the Brazilian stepped up accept her prize with her arms raised high — a moment that quickly went viral.
“She’s so amazing. She’s a queen,” Biles said of Andrade, who had finished runner-up to the American in the all-around and vault finals.
“First, it was an all-Black podium, so that was very exciting for us. But then Jordan was like, should we bow to her? And I was like, absolutely.”
Andrade was really touched by the gesture.
“They are the world’s best athletes and what they did means a lot to me. I feel honored,” said the Brazilian.
Despite the less than ideal finale, the Paris Games still marks a triumphant comeback for the 27-year-old Biles, whose three golds in Paris included leading the U.S. to the team title.
She withdrew from the Tokyo Games three years ago suffering with a mental block known as the “twisties” – a temporary loss of spatial awareness experienced by some gymnasts when completing high-difficulty elements.
Her withdrawal caused concern among her vast fan base about whether she would ever set foot on the Olympic stage again as Biles took a two-year break from the sport.
She returned healthy, happy and as dominant as ever as she qualified for her third Games and has not ruled out competing at the Los Angeles Games in 2028.
She said she leaves Paris proud.
“I’ve accomplished way more than my wildest dreams,” Biles said.
“Not just at this Olympics, but in the sport. So I can’t be mad at my performances.”
—Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim, Rory Carroll, Karen Braun and Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber, editing by Pritha Sarkar
