Simone Biles is BACK at Paris Olympics! Team USA gymnast puts Tokyo ‘twisties’ in rearview mirror to land difficult Yurchenko double pike and seize lead at first day of qualifying

The reverent silence of the first moments, when a tiny figure, a symbol of struggle and perseverance in sport, prepared to do a back somersault on a polished piece of wood 10 cm wide, taking us to the outer limits of the Olympic theater.

Simon Biles, in a leotard of a thousand sequins, arrived to the applause of a crowd that even celebrated her warm-up, but she was suddenly all alone. Paris and the rest of the world held their breath, waiting to see if she would really put her name on these Olympics in a way that was completely different from the one she had symbolized her last time. Starting with a performance on the beam, the apparatus that can tear a gymnast’s nerves apart like no other. Every other athlete in the rotation was ready when she took it. All eyes were on her. The crowd was in silence.

She soared into the dismount, with two double twists and two somersaults, her heart pounding. The drama and misery of her Tokyo Olympics faded into the background as we were brought back to the uncertainty of that place.

Biles was warming up for the floor exercise when she landed awkwardly, straining the left calf that we now know she had suffered a few weeks earlier. She left the field with team doctor Dr. Marcia Faustin before U.S. team medics rushed to tape her left leg from the knee to the ankle.

It was a monumental moment, raising questions about whether Biles, whose withdrawal from the Tokyo Games due to a mental block known as “the twisties” shed light on the well-being of athletes everywhere, would be able to continue. In the stands, U.S. team technical director Chellsie Memmel felt “crushed.”

With Biles’s upward trajectory, the US enjoys a commanding lead with 172,296 points

She later said: ‘I can’t even imagine how she felt.’

Even as the medics worked around her, there was more evidence of the brutal uncertainties of gymnastics. Biles’ team Jade Carey’s floor exercise ended disastrously when she lost her balance on landing and plummeted off the stage.

Biles didn’t blink. The 319-caliber gymnast stepped forward to perform a floor routine of the most extraordinary difficulty, one that took her to gravity-defying heights. She took a step off the floor on her first tumbling pass—one of Biles’ signature triple-twisting double back tuck moves, also known as Biles II—and a step forward on her second. But those 90 seconds were a statement of her return to the Olympics, for celebrities—the ubiquitous Snoop Dogg, Ariane Grande and Tom Cruise—whose presence revealed how gymnastics is something bigger than sport when it comes to competition.

There was still fear. Biles sat on the top step leading off the floor after her routine, instead of joining her teammates when her performance was over. She sat flat on the arena floor before attacking the vault, the event that ended her Tokyo Olympics.

If there was ever a time to slow down and protect the strapped calf, this was it. But Biles joked with her teammates by crawling back on all fours after a warm-up run and then performing her Yurchenko double pike—a jump so difficult no one else attempts it—cursing herself for taking a step back on the landing. The score of 15.8 reflected the achievement.

Biles struggled with an ankle injury on Sunday, although it did not appear to affect her performance

Biles is the leader of her qualifying group after the first day of competition in Paris

For these Games, she plans to introduce the Weiler Kip—a new feat on the uneven bars, her supposedly weakest apparatus and the only one on which she has yet to come up with a maneuver of her own—to further increase her starting score. She did not attempt it yesterday/Sunday, even though the qualifying round would have been the safest place to do so. Perhaps this was a concession to her discomfort. If and when Biles completes the maneuver, it will be the sixth event named after her.

The Americans were reluctant to discuss her injury in detail. American gymnastics coach Cecile Landi revealed that she had felt “just a little bit of pain in my calf,” which was a recurrence of the previous strain. Biles could be heard expressing her frustration on the TV broadcast.

“When I took off, I felt it. It’s right on my calf. Right where I had the f***ing tear.” When asked if it was just a minor injury, Landi replied, “I don’t know. I’m not a doctor.”

Biles walked carefully as she left the stadium, but the look on her face took us so far away from the forlorn, broken person who spoke to us in Tokyo just over 1,000 days ago. The demons seem to have been banished and Biles is once again operating in a different dimension from everyone else. The feeling that these Games will bear her stamp is irresistible.