PARIS — When Simone Biles stepped up to perform on the vault at Tuesday’s team all-around final at the Olympic Games, her teammate Jordan Chiles was watching closely.
It had been this exact moment back in 2021, at the last Summer Olympics in Tokyo, where it had all unraveled for Biles. Amid the intense pressure of the world’s expectations, she had found herself in arena suddenly unable to perform her own high-flying routines, beset by the “twisties,” mysteriously incapable of twisting in midair despite having done so thousands of times in her life.
She was forced to withdraw from that event and others in Tokyo. Without her, the U.S. team settled for a silver medal in the team final. And ultimately, Biles took two years off from gymnastics altogether to tend to her mental health.
So perhaps it would have been understandable if something unusual had happened on Tuesday night at Bercy Arena in Paris, with the Americans on the vault to open the competition as they had in 2021.
Instead, Biles vaulted as beautifully as ever. And when her feet hit the mat and her arms raised into the air, she smiled, as her teammates leapt on the sidelines with joy.
“I was like, ‘Yo, hallelujah, no flashbacks!'” said Chiles, who leapt up and down with joy when Biles landed her routine. “From then on — she’s the greatest of all greats, so I think it was like, ‘Okay, we’re about to really do this.'”
The U.S. went on to finish the night with a massive 5.8-point margin over its closest competitor, Italy, to reclaim the gold medal in the women’s team all-around.
“I think it speaks volumes of her strength and what she was able to come back from with the whole world watching,” said Chellsie Memmel, the technical lead for the Olympic team and a former Olympic gymnast herself. “It continues to solidify her place as the greatest gymnast of all time.”
Biles finished as the leading scorer of the night, even with a step out of bounds on the floor exercise. She competed in all four events — vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor — alongside teammates Chiles, Suni Lee and Jade Carey. (The fifth member of Team USA, the 16-year-old Hezly Rivera, did not perform in the final.)
“I did feel a lot of relief” after she landed the vault, Biles admitted afterward. Yet this final had felt very different from 2021, when the pressure had been suffocating. She said she felt “calm and ready” this time, and it helped to start her morning with therapy, she added — something she has been open about, as her recovery required as much attention to her mental health as it did to her gymnastics training.
“It’s been a roller coaster for the past three years, with a lot of good times and a lot of very difficult times. So today was amazing,” said Cecile Landi, Biles’s gymnastics coach.
Ahead of this summer’s Games, Biles and her teammates said they were seeking “redemption” for the disappointment in Tokyo. “I feel like we all have more to give. Our Tokyo performances weren’t the best,” Biles said after the U.S. Olympic Team Trials last month. “We weren’t under the best circumstances, either, but I feel like we have a lot of weight on our shoulders to go out there and prove we’re better athletes.”
The bronze medal was won by Brazil, whose star Rebeca Andrade is expected to be one of the biggest challengers to Biles in the individual all-around event.
Concerns about Biles’s physical health had appeared Sunday after she tweaked her calf during the qualifying round. Afterward, coaches downplayed the injury’s severity and said she would compete in the team final. Ultimately, Biles performed as usual, with her left calf wrapped in athletic tape.
The gold is the first medal of the 2024 Olympic Games for Biles, who was already the most decorated gymnast in history. It is her eighth Olympic medal overall and her fifth gold — though Biles said she doesn’t keep count.
“I’m doing what I love and enjoying it. So that’s really all that matters to me,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll truly understand the depth of it until I walk away from the sport.”
At this Olympics, she could win as many as four more. Biles is set to compete again Thursday in the individual all-around final, in which Biles, Andrade and fellow U.S. gymnast Lee, who won the gold in Tokyo, are thought to be the event’s strongest contenders. Biles also qualified to compete in three of the four event finals: vault, balance beam and floor exercise.
Perhaps the biggest mistake Biles made on Tuesday night came before the competition even began: as Team USA was being introduced, she ran out onto the arena floor too early.
Arena staff directed Biles back into place as her teammates laughed, their ease and good cheer a fitting sign of the gold medal performance that soon followed.