Simone Biles is living up to the hype at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, winning the women’s all-around gold medal just days after helping Team USA capture team gold. Manuel, whose emotional post-swim interview likely had you ugly-crying on the couch, is the first African-American woman to win an individual gold medal in Olympic swimming.
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The first one was for the team.
“But I don’t think they go hand in hand”, Boorman said, “because those incidents don’t have anything to do with the way these girls train”.
While the spotlight was on Biles, it was also a sweet comeback for Raisman, the oldest member of the five-woman USA team at 22. Solid displays on the beam and floor took her to a total of 56.883, just outside the top 10.
Britain’s Max Whitlock had won a bronze medal in the men’s event on Wednesday, but Downie’s medal hopes ended with a poor score on her third apparatus, the uneven bars, before she made another error on beam.
Russia’s Aliya Mustafina took bronze, and like the rest of the field knew she was in the presence of greatness that could not be denied.
Then it was time for Raisman to listen as her national anthem played, gazing up a step on the podium at Biles – and no one else in the world. Raisman says Biles is “in a different league”.
Biles erased whatever lingering doubts there were about whether she’s the greatest gymnast of all time Thursday, winning the Olympic all-around title in a rout. The first time she vaulted, she stopped on the first one, sailed way over on the second and scored a zero.
“It’s hard to put into words what I’m feeling but I’m very very happy and I’m just so excited that we went 1-2”.
“She really ranks at the top”, said Martha Karolyi, the national team coordinator who helped Nadia Comaneci score a ideal 10 in the 1976 games as a coach in Romania.
Halfway through the women’s all-around final, Simone Biles was in an unfamiliar, unthinkable place: Second place, that is. Barbara Engleder won the 50m rifle three position contest for Germany’s first gold in Olympic women’s shooting.
Whatever reprise of those fears Raisman might have felt Wednesday in Rio were not borne out once she hit the mat for the all-around final.
She added: “We’re basically like sisters and will have this forever”. “It means the world to me”, she noted.
Perfection is what Biles chases, and she came as close to it as ever today.
Left unsaid was that she does it better than anyone ever has before.
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The gold medal was decided before the competition started.
