The U.S. women’s gymnastics team, anchored by all around world champion Simone Biles, won the team gold medal at the Olympics on Tuesday by the widest margin ever.
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Gabby Douglas and the USA team stand for the national anthem.
LEWIS: Well, is it any surprise if I tell you that they won gold, and they won gold convincingly. “But I think instead of using it as pressure, we use it as motivation”.
SHAPIRO: Oh, that used to be a country.
Biles and two other USA gymnasts, Aly Raisman and London all-around gold medal victor Gabby Douglas, had finished with the three highest all around scores in the qualifying event on Sunday.
The U.S. posted the highest combined score on each of the four apparatuses.
It was all but over even before three-time world champion Biles started her floor routine, the last performance of the night. When you do that, Ari, you’re going to win.
But despite those glitches, the “Final Five” soared so far out of sight of their rivals that the other teams must have felt they needed to board a supersonic jet to catch them. Traditionally Russia and China are gymnastics powerhouses. How close were these other teams?
In the end it was not even close. But let’s do some math here. They finished more than eight points in front of runner-up Russian Federation. China took the bronze.
In a sport where tenths of a point can mean the difference between a gold and no medal at all, their winning margin of 8.209 points was a blowout.
Not since the golden era of the Soviet Union, which won eight successive women’s team golds between 1952 and 1980, has one team been so superior.
LEWIS: You know, there are no shortage of superlatives when it comes to Simone Biles. “I never meant any disrespect and apologize if I offended anyone”. While Karolyi has led the Americans to unprecedented success, the past five years have been dominant by even her standards. Committing five double faults in one game, Williams lost to Elina Svitolina of Ukraine 6-4, 6-3 in the third round in a real shocker Tuesday, ending the No. 1-seeded American’s bid to become the first tennis player to collect a pair of singles golds.
“We go in there and we just train so hard, so coming in here today we just expected to do what we’ve been doing in the workout, and we knew that if we could just do what we’ve been doing at workouts then we would have a good outcome”, Hernandez, 16, said.
“We just thought the name was flawless because it is Marta’s a year ago and we are the “final five” for her and it is awesome to end it off with her like this”. Here are the 10 countries with the most medals after Day Four. Simon Biles will be competing along with teammate Aly Raisman.
“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”. On the uneven bars – Madison Kocian and Gabby Douglas. They finished with Hernandez, Raisman and Biles delivering high-flying, engaging floor routines.
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Ledecky had plenty to savor Tuesday in probably the most exciting finish to an Olympic race I’ve seen since Beijing 2008. Simone Biles leads the US women’s gymnastics team in Rio.
