Simone Biles of the United States competes on the balance beam during the Artistic Gymnastics Women’s Team Final on Day 4 of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
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Gold has a way of overturning conventional wisdom.
Simone Biles got her bid for a record five gold medals at the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games off to a flying start as the United States women coasted to a team gymnastics title defence on Tuesday, with China edged into third by Russian Federation after costly mistakes from the mainlanders. On social media in the run up to these games, a comparison between the winning vault now and the gold medalist from a half century ago went viral.
The Chinese team echoed Mustafina when Shang Chunsong glowed in praise of Simone Biles while admitting that silver is the medal they were hoping for. Seriously, that’s like a football team winning by around 75 points.
At which point, the toughest team in America bit them.
Raisman and Douglas were the two returnees from London. Especially for Simon Biles, who remains as humble amidst her greatness, as in the post-medal tweet below. Serena Williams lost on the tennis court and the USA women’s soccer team gave up a late goal and ended up in a draw with Colombia.
How to Watch: Watch Phelps continue his gold medal quest live on your smartphone or desktop computer.
“We competed with the understanding that the USA team were stronger than us”. That whole picture shifted in the second rotation. The United States led by less than a point after one rotation and expanded its lead to 4.026 points after Russian Federation suffered through a messy balance beam effort and was passed by China.
Hernandez, Raisman and Biles were in the floor exercise for the fourth and final rotation. It turned nearly into an intramural meet between the three with the gold all but decided.
The Americans had the highest team score on every event.
The lasting image was a powerful airborne display by Biles, who received a standing ovation.
Biles said Karolyi means “the world” to her. We just improve the quality and everybody needs to follow us. And 28 times they hit.
Barely five minutes later, the youngest member of Team USA was all business. Anticipation had built to learn the follow-up to the popular Fierce Five moniker of 2012.
This year it’s the Final Five, Raisman told Karolyi. It was the largest margin of victory in an Olympic women’s team final since the Soviet Union – remember when we used to call it that?
But they soon revealed that the meaning was a lot more personal. Raisman said they were able to keep it secret and made Karolyi cry when they told her about the tribute.
“It’s really unbelievable. It hasn’t sunk in at all yet”, Raisman said.
“Maybe I’ll pop in the gym”, she said.
“It feels the same as four years ago”, Douglas countered.
Biles also had to whirl her arms around to stay on the balance beam after a sequence of three backflips left her wobbling on the four-inch wide apparatus. They instantly liked the nickname. “That helped us”, said the Texan. After the fight, a tearful Szogedi said she was “gutted” and that training four years for so little time on the mat was devastating.
The three-time World champion joined the Olympic gold medallist club by clinching the title with her teammates Tuesday.
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Karolyi is ready to step aside – at least she thinks she is. “But also I have to not focus on what other people have for me”.
