According to USA Today, the team had considered several possibilities for nicknames, knowing they had to come up with one of their own or one would be chosen for them.
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Biles will also compete in vault, beam and floor exercise, while Raisman will compete on floor, Hernandez on beam, and Kocian and Douglas in uneven bars. Douglas, however, will not compete in the all around final in Rio, since the rules state that each country is only allowed to enter its top two qualifiers. Marta Karolyi, who helped turn her native Romania into a gymnastics powerhouse in the 70s with her husband Bela long before becoming head coach of the American team, said the quality of the USA program, and its dynasty, stacks up against those dominant Eastern European programs of the past. But they weren’t yet used to winning at that level, not quite accustomed to dominating the rest of the world. By posting the highest scores on each event, Team USA kept themselves so far ahead of their worldwide competitors – teams from Russia, China (which took bronze), Japan, Great Britain, Brazil, the Netherlands and Germany – there was no hope for anyone to catch up. It means competition routines every day in the gym in the lead-up to these Games.
So how did they get their name?
The U.S. team’s dominance during the entire event was very prominent, with 10 of the team’s 12 routines receiving scores 15.000 and higher.
“We’ve put so much training behind this, and I don’t think we could have been any more prepared”, said Biles, “so the outcome is just fantastic that we finally have the gold”. Over the decades, Karolyi, the 73-year-old, Romanian-born gymnastics veteran, has emerged as one of the premiere faces of the sport.
The Americans stand to build on that total with more medals later this week. Raisman, along with her four teammates, captured gold in the women’s gymnastics competition at the 2016 Summer Games, showing just how dominant a group they are. “The quality of the work is what we’re working daily”.
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The gymnasts were too.
