Simone Biles’ third and perhaps final Olympic Games came to an end on Monday afternoon with the floor final, where she was defeated by 0.033 points by her Brazilian rival Rebeca Andrade.
The 27-year-old, the most decorated female gymnast ever and the oldest American woman to make an Olympic gymnastics team since the 1950s, added a fourth medal to her tally at the Paris Games after earlier golds in the team event, the all-around and the vault. She has now won 11 medals in an extraordinary Olympic career that has spanned eight years.
Biles, ranked third of nine finalists, received a standing ovation after an extraordinary routine in which she completed the eponymous Biles II triple double on the first step and a Biles I double layout with half twist on the third. However, she was assessed a penalty for stepping out of bounds, which left her 0.033 behind Andrade.
Jordan Chiles of the United States took bronze, moving up from fifth to third place after an investigation. She was reduced to tears of joy when her updated score of 13.766 appeared on the screen, just 0.066 points ahead of Romanian duo Ana Barbosu and Sabrina Maneca-Voinea.
Biles extended her reputation as the most decorated female gymnast ever, winning a total of 41 medals at the Olympic Games and World Championships.
“I couldn’t be prouder of how I did,” she said afterward. “I’m 27 years old and I’m walking away from these Games with four medals to add to my collection. I’m not mad about it.”
With a second gold medal of her career to go with her three silvers and one bronze, the popular Andrade became the most decorated Brazilian Olympian ever. Andrade’s other gold medal came in the vault at Tokyo 2020 after Biles withdrew.
Earlier on Monday, Biles missed out on her fourth medal on the balance beam after falling during her routine and finishing in fifth place, one position ahead of her American teammate Suni Lee, who also fell.
Meanwhile, Italy’s Alice D’Amato didn’t even win that final, but she did survive. But a routine that avoided major mistakes was enough for the 21-year-old from Brescia to win an unlikely Olympic title, her country’s first-ever gold medal in artistic gymnastics, sharing the podium with teammate Manila Esposito, who won bronze. Biles finished fifth with an identical score to Lee, while Chinese teenager Zhou Yaqin took silver.
On the final day of a competition that began seven days ago with Italy winning its first artistic gymnastics medal in 96 years, Brescia and Esposito kept their composure as one famous opponent after another made costly mistakes in a beam final, the footage of which will not be sent to the Olympic Museum in Lausanne for eternity.
The beam, which challenges gymnasts to perform routines of extraordinary precision on a platform 4ft above the ground and not much wider than a credit card, is the sport’s most precarious apparatus. On Monday, in what can only be described as one of those days, at least half of the eight finalists fell victim to the discipline’s inherent unpredictability.
First in the order of eight was Zhou, the 18-year-old Olympic debutante who won silver on beam behind Biles at last year’s world championships, who was on her way to a flawless routine for a balance check that forced her to bend over and grab the beam, drawing audible gasps from the crowd and a significant deduction from the judges. Her score of 14.100 was a disappointment after she had qualified highest with a 14.866.
Lee then put together a solid set until she slipped on the final skill of her aerial series and broke the beam in what appeared to be a very painful fall. She was consoled by longtime coach Jess Graba after completing her set for a score of 13.100, ending her Paris Games with a team gold and two bronzes, including one in the all-around, no mean feat for a gymnast who had overcome a pair of career-threatening kidney ailments to reach the starting line.
The door was suddenly open for Biles to become the third American Olympic beam champion, after Shannon Miller and Shawn Johnson.
But first, D’Amato took to the apparatus and performed a flawless routine, scoring 13.466. This won her gold and secured her a medal. The crowd cheered.
The clouds had parted for Biles to win an eighth Olympic gold medal and her first ever on beam, but she backed off the beam after a back handspring-layout stepout-layout stepout sequence, a sequence she has historically rarely failed to pull off. Biles remounted and nailed her dismount, where after an interminable wait she was awarded a score of 14.100, the same as Lee and out of the medals.
Earlier, China’s Zou Jingyuan won gold on the men’s parallel bars, becoming the first man in 32 years to win medals on rings and bars at the same Olympics. Ukraine’s Illia Kovtun won silver and Japan’s Shinnosuke Oka took bronze. In the men’s horizontal bar final, Oka won his third gold medal at the Olympics in a mistake-filled final. Colombian teenager Angel Barajas took silver and Taiwan’s Tang Chia-hung and China’s Zhang Boheng shared bronze.