Key events
Preamble
Welcome to the women’s gymnastics all-around final, where we will be following the biggest story of the Games …
What will be the impact of Big Parma on this event?
Well, that and the prospect of watching Simone Biles, the greatest women’s gymnast of all time, winning the all-around title eight years after doing so in Rio and three years after having to drop out in Tokyo.
Or maybe seeing Suni Lee go back-to-back after a couple of years in the relative wilderness.
Or maybe seeing Rebeca Andrade become the first Brazilian to win one of the most cherished gold medals of the Olympics.
We’ll be underway in about an hour. Let’s watch …
Beau will be here shortly. In the meantime, here’s how the team event went down:
Of course there was theatre at the very end. Two hours into this women’s Artistic Gymnastics Team final, with the USA coasting grandly at the head of the field, the logistics of competition left Simone Biles with one final act to stop the show.
Three years on from Tokyo and The Breakdown, the only discipline remaining 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 eyes of the world as ever, Simone Biles got to dance like no one was watching.
Paris 2024 knew what it was getting with these gymnastics, a spectacle that would play out, as it did here, like a cross between the Super Bowl, Vegas and a Marvel movie. Mainly it was getting America: American flash, American show, American story-telling, the key event in a Games that has for many editions now been powered by US TV money and US sport tourism. Frankly, there haven’t been this many Americans in Paris since 1945.
And of course Paris was getting the Biles-industrial complex, the Biles narrative arc, which reached its full extension on a wonderful night of flex and twang and defiance of the elements; one that ended, naturally, with gold for the US women.
You can read the full article below: