While the Americans dominated Sunday, Tuesday is another day. Scores will be wiped clean for the team, individual all-around and event finals. Douglas, 20, the defending all-around gold medalist, is making a bit of history already: She’s the first woman since Nadia Comaneci to win the all-around gold medal at the Olympics and return to the Games four years later. Gymnastics has always been one of the most-watched sports in the Olympics, and should be again in Rio.
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Douglas is attempting to become the first woman in almost 50 years to repeat as Olympic champion.
The Williams sisters didn’t provide the only tennis shocker of the day: Unseeded Juan Martin del Potro beat current number-one ranked tennis player Novak Djokovic in the first round of competition. And just like the young women in the glittery red-and-blue leotards national team. “‘She is incredibly dynamic on the floor.’ The announcer also called out her move, The Biles!”. Preliminary scores are wiped out before Tuesday’s team event.
Fierce Fiver Aly Raisman, who finished second in qualifying to make the all-around final, will do those same three events.
Gabby Douglas, meanwhile, will compete only on uneven bars.
“I hate the two-per-country rule”, Raisman said.
Trautwig was reviled by gymnastics fans even before the controversy on Sunday night, and he is often derided on the corner of social media known as the Gymternet. A time when the top-scoring gymnasts were allowed to advance to the the finals in individual all-around.
Because the USA women’s team is so dominant this year, all five athletes could have earned a spot in the all-around finals if not for the rule. They were the only two gymnasts to put up at least a 15.0 on the event. She is the first reigning Olympic champion to return to the next games since Nadia Comaneci in 1980, where she finished second.
Biles nailed her dynamic vault, balance beam and floor sets to record the highest all-around score.
Team USA most likely has the best three female gymnasts in the world. And it showed, particularly on floor exercise in the second rotation and vault in the third. The gymnast didn’t seem too upset about it, though.
The Netherlands squeaked into the team final with an eighth place finish, just 0.168 above Canada. It will be which teams get silver and bronze behind them.
With a score of 185.238, the American team topped China and Russia-and the competition was not even that close. Eythora Thorsdottir finished eighth all-around and Lieke Wevers will join her in the all-around after finishing 17th.
Raisman also rose to the occasion during the vault, and @USAGym Tweets that “That’s probably the best Amanar we’ve ever seen from Raisman in competition”.
In 1981, amid concerns about the toll the sport took on young girls, the worldwide governing body of gymnastics changed the age limit for Olympic participation from 14 to 15.
At ages when most teenagers are pondering their futures, these gymnasts have trained to develop technical prowess that ordinary kids can’t imagine.
“We just need to enjoy the process”.
Biles later started attending gymnastic classes and practiced the sport diligently. Ponor retired after the 2012 Olympics in London, but made a decision to come back in March of 2015.
Shockingly, Romania is not around to make a run this time, failing to qualify a team.
She was aiming to become only the third woman to successfully defend the Olympic all-around title.
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Then there’s the wonder of Oksana Chusovitina of Uzbekistan. She was edged by less than a half a point.
