Olympic gymnastics live: Simone Biles goes for all-around gold in Paris
Key events
Biles opens with a 15.766
My God.
Difficulty level 6.4, execution 9.366.
Biles scores!
She was blown away by a big jump when she landed, but she clearly did the most difficult jump in women’s gymnastics.
Georgia-Mae Fenton has a 13.033 on the floor.
Andrade equals her score from the team final – 15.100!
Now it’s time for Biles, who attempts the Yurchenko double pike, the difficulty of which is astronomically high.
Suni Lee’s score is disappointing. It’s 13.933, two-tenths lower than her qualifying score. But it’s a solid execution score of 8.933. The hard one was 5.000, which won’t be in the same league as …
Rebecca Andradewho just floats, flips and lands cleanly. She could take an early lead on Biles here.
Team GB’s Georgia-Mae Fenton does a floor exercise to a symphonic version of Another Brick in the Wall. Interesting.
Japanese Haruka Nakamura scores a 13.700 on the beam.
The first score of the evening is in – Germany Sarah Voss with a 12.866 on the floor.
I’m still waiting for Lee’s score.
Suni Lee is up first. She looks clean in the air, but lands significantly off-center with a little hop. She doesn’t seem overjoyed.
Apparently I don’t have the “multiview” option that I had for the team event, so I’ll just say that I think Germany’s Sarah Voss has cool music on the floor exercise.
It would be nice if the main feed showed other routines instead of the 30-second Suni Lee pacing, but…
The introduction of the athletes has only just begun, because gymnastics is similar to an American sport: the indicated start time is not the real start time.
Kaylia Nemour, who used to represent France, gets a nice roar from the crowd. Then Suni Lee and Rebeca Andrade get an even louder reception. And then Simone Biles. I’d like to see a decibel measurement of that.
There has been a question about BBC coverage and where to watch it. As I live in the US I have no idea. Can anyone share?
Preview rotation 1
Biles and Andrade should be ahead on the vault. Biles’ 15.800 in qualifying was the highest score on an apparatus in qualifying. Nemour was the only one to come close with a 15.600 on the uneven bars.
Lee, Nemour and Esposito also scored a limit of 14 on the vault.
Qiu will start on her strongest apparatus by far, the uneven bars, on which she scored a 15.066 in qualifying. None of her other scores were higher than 14.
Scheme
The top six in qualifying (Biles, Andrade, Lee, D’Amato, Esposito, Nemour) will start on the vault.
The uneven bars group consists of the two Chinese gymnasts (Qiu Qiyuan and Ou Yushan), together with Canada’s Elsabeth Black and Australia’s Ruby Pass.
Team GB’s Georgia-Mae Fenton and Alice Kinsella start with the floor exercise.
Scoring format
How did the top contenders perform here in qualifying and in the team event? Glad you asked…
Qualifying (Total score, then vault, uneven bars, beam and floor)
1. Simone Biles: 59,566 – 15,800, 14,433, 14,733, 14,600
2. Rebecca Andrade: 57,700 – 14,900, 14,400, 14,500, 13,900
3. Suni Lee: 56,132 – 14,133, 14,866, 14,033, 13,100
4. Kaylia Nemour (Algeria): 55,966 – 14,000, 15,600, 13,200, 13,166
5. Manila Esposito (Italy): 55,898 – 14,133, 14,166, 13,966, 13,633
6. Alice d’Amato (Italy): 55,432 – 13,200, 14,666, 13,866, 13,700
7. Qiu Qiyuan (China): 54,998 – 13,233, 15,066, 13,533, 13,166
8. Elsabeth Zwart (Canada): 54,766 – 14,100, 14,166, 13,100, 13,400
9. Rina Kishi (Japan): 54,699 – 14,033, 13,566, 13,500, 13,600
10. Flavia Saraiva (Brazil): 54,199 – 14,100, 13,800, 13,133, 13,166,
Team event
Biles: 14.900, 14.400, 14.366, 14.666. Her vault was less challenging than what she attempted in qualifying. Her beam routine was slightly less spectacular.
Andrade: 15,100, 14,533, 14,133, 14,200
Lee: no jump, 14.566, 14.600, 13.533. Huge improvement on the beam.
(Nemour did not participate)
Esposito: 14,166, no beams, 13,966, 12,666. Maybe a bit of nerves on the floor.
D’Amato: 13,933, 14,633, 13,933, 13,466
Qiu: 13,133, 14,300, 14,600, no floor
Preamble
Welcome to the women’s all-around gymnastics final, where we’ll follow the biggest story of the Games…
What impact will Big Parma have on this event?
And then there’s the prospect of seeing Simone Biles, the greatest female gymnast of all time, win the all-around title, eight years after she did so in Rio and three years after she was forced to bow out in Tokyo.
Or maybe seeing Suni Lee go twice in a row after a few years in the relative wilderness.
Or maybe to see Rebeca Andrade become the first Brazilian to win one of the most cherished gold medals of the Olympic Games.
We’ll be on our way in about an hour. Let’s see…
Beau will be there shortly. In the meantime, here’s how the team event went:
Of course, there was theater at the end. Two hours into this women’s Artistic Gymnastics team final, with the U.S. leading the field in stunning fashion, the logistics of the competition left Simone Biles with one final act to end the show.
Three years after Tokyo and The Breakdown, the only discipline left in that same team event was the Biles floor routine. And so, in front of Bill Gates, Gianni Infantino, Serena Williams and Spike Lee, in front of the world as always, Simone Biles got to dance like no one was watching.
Paris 2024 knew what it was getting with this gymnastics spectacle, a spectacle that would play out, as it does here, like a cross between the Super Bowl, Vegas and a Marvel movie. It was all about getting America: American flash, American showmanship, American storytelling, the main event in a Games that for many years now has been driven by American TV money and American sports tourism. Frankly, there haven’t been this many Americans in Paris since 1945.
And of course, Paris got the Biles industrial complex, the Biles storyline, which was fully realized in a beautiful evening of flexibility, twang and defiance against the elements; an evening that, of course, ended with gold for the American women.
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