“Hey everyone!” the U.S women’s gymnastics team opened their post-podium training Facebook Live chat with NBC Olympics. Mustafina called the chaos surrounding the Russian team’s status before arriving in Rio “inconvenient” but doesn’t believe it became a distraction. All three broke sixty and were at least a point ahead of the 4th place finisher, but only Biles and Raisman will move on to the all-around final. So even if Biles, Douglas and Raisman earn the three highest combined scores tomorrow, and it’s not unlikely that they will, just the top two will get a chance to fight for the most coveted medal in gymnastics.
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Simone Biles, Aly Raisman and Gabby Douglas finished 1-2-3 in Sunday’s gymnastics qualifications. Biles, one of the fiercest competitors for the US team, has been one of the frontrunners for quite some time, with many predicting she’d take home several gold medals throughout the trials.
Uzbek Oksana Chusovitina’s gamble to keep going at the age of 41 nearly certainly paid off as the oldest ever gymnast to compete at an Olympics looked set to make the eight-woman vault final with an average score of 14.999.
Douglas, Raisman and Biles knew and understood what they had to do to make it to the all-around.
The New York Times reported that under Karolyi’s 15-year tenure as the leader of the USA women’s gymnastics program, she’s pushed for the evolution of leotard fashion. “Everybody looked at her and said that kid’s going to do something big some day”.
Douglas will still play a key role in the team competition, where the United States women are favorites to repeat their gold medal win in London.
As insane as it sounds, it’s not impossible for Team USA gymnastics to sweep the team and individual gold medals in Rio. For women, there are four pieces of equipment: vault, floor exercise, uneven bars and balance beam.
Her total of 60.131 was just 0.476 of a point adrift of Raisman, who along with Biles made it to the all around final. She now competes for her native Uzbekistan against girls the age of her 17-year-old son Alisher. She has said she routinely lights a candle to St. Sebastian, the patron saint of athletes and of Rio, before each meet. “I’m a little less nervous because it’s done and I qualified”, Biles said afterwards to the small army of reporters that mobbed her in the mixed zone.
Oksana Chusovitina of Uzbekistan competed in her first Olympics before most of the women she will be competing against in Brazil were born.
So all told, top gymnasts like Biles could compete in the same routines as many as four times over nine days. “We’re hoping to get a medal as a team”. She won her first domestic volleyball tournament that year, then teamed up with Kendrick, who won the title in 2011. Second-place team China sat almost 10 points behind the US with a score of 175.279.
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It’s a testament to the empire Karolyi has built since taking over the program in 2001 that it’s not merely just hype but entirely plausible, a luxury afforded when you have the three-time reigning world champion (Biles), the defending Olympic champion (Douglas), a three-time Olympic medalist (Raisman) and the reigning uneven bars world champion (Kocian) on the roster. “I’ll just pray normally to myself, but I have it there in case”.
