Women's Olympic gymnastics FAQ: Team USA's hopes, challengers, more

The Paris Olympics, which begin Friday and conclude Aug. 11, will feature 339 events across 32 sports, but one sport captures the imagination like no other: women’s artistic gymnastics.

There are six medals in this sport up for grabs at this Olympics: the team all-around, individual all-around and one medal each for bars, beam, vault and floor.

Team USA enters the Olympics as the clear favorite, but global gymnastics has evolved considerably since the COVID-delayed Tokyo Games in 2021, and many nations are capable of challenging the Americans.

Here are frequently asked questions about the 2024 competition ahead of the Games:

Who is competing for Team USA in Paris?

Team USA is taking five gymnasts to the Olympics: Simone Biles, Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey and Hezly Rivera. Four of the five — Biles, Lee, Chiles and Carey — were part of Team USA in Tokyo and won medals there.

16-year-old Rivera is the only newcomer, but what a newcomer she is. She’s the youngest athlete competing for Team USA in any sport and just began her senior career in February.

Rivera is an all-around competitor but spikes highest in balance beam, which is traditionally an area of weakness for USA Gymnastics. Her scores there should help Team USA contend for the all-around gold.

Which big-name American gymnasts aren’t going to Paris — and why?

Shilese Jones, considered by many to be the next big thing in American gymnastics, skipped the Olympic trials this year due to a shoulder injury. Skye Blakely, the 19-year-old who finished second to Biles in the U. S. Championships this year, pulled out of Olympic contention after suffering a ruptured Achilles 24 hours before the trials were to start.

Former Team USA gold medalist Gabby Douglas, hoping to get back on the Olympic team after an eight-year absence, performed well in the U.S. Championships in the spring. But an untimely ankle injury prevented her from clinching a spot in the trials. Douglas hasn’t given up her Olympic dream, though, as she plans to compete for a spot on the 2028 squad.

Which nations will challenge the United States for the team medal?

All eyes are on Brazil. Led by beloved all-around gymnast Rebeca Andrade — one of the few people on the planet to beat Biles at her own game — the Brazilians are bringing skill, energy and the element of surprise to Paris.

They’re teasing some new high-difficulty routines that could help close the gap to Team USA; if the Brazilians stick them, the team all-around might turn into a close race.

The other dark horses in the mix are France and China. France excels at the uneven bars and could make up its lost points on other events there. China is solid just about everywhere and could creep into gold- medal contention if other nations underperform.

Can anyone beat Biles to individual all-around gold?

Potentially, but the pickings are slim.

With Jones and Blakely missing out on the Olympics due to injury, there’s no one on Team USA who can challenge her. Instead, we’re looking at two international gymnasts — one we know well and one we’re just meeting for the first time.

Andrade is the fan favorite to challenge Biles in the all-around. The Brazilian finished second to Biles at the 2023 World Championships by a margin of just 1.633 over four events. With added difficulty expected on Andrade’s vault and floor routines, we could see that 1.633 gap disappear at the Olympics.

Andrade broke through in 2016 at her home Olympics in Rio but cemented her place in the gymnastics elite at the 2021 Games in Tokyo. She picked up a silver medal in the individual all-around there, finishing just behind Team USA’s Lee, and won a gold medal in vault days later when she debuted her Cheng routine in the final.

Incredibly, she's teasing yet another vault upgrade for Paris — yes, that's an upgrade on the most difficult women's vault in history.

Helen Kevric of Germany is the other contender to challenge Biles. Like Team USA’s Rivera, she’s just 16, and that means she’s making her senior debut in 2024.

Kevric dominated the junior categories in the all-around and is expected to make a splash in Paris, but is she ready to beat Biles in elite competition?

Which global gymnasts will excel on each apparatus?

On bars, look no further than Kaylia Nemour. The French-born Algerian gymnast has the highest-difficulty bar routine in the world and is widely expected to walk away with an individual medal. She did precisely that at the World Championships in 2023, the first African gymnast to do so.

Medals in the beam tend to go to the most consistent athletes, not the most explosive ones — and consistency is something that China’s Zhou Yaqin has in the bag. She finished second on beam at the 2023 World Championships, 1/10 of a point behind Biles in first.

Vault is expected to be dominated by Biles and Andrade, but Mexico’s Alexa Moreno and Canada’s Ellie Black could enter the conversation if those two slip up.

Moreno is a powerhouse, full of sparkle and verve, and she tends to become a crowd favorite in international competitions. Black, meanwhile, is stoic and precise, and her pitch-perfect vaults can easily outscore messy high-difficulty routines.

Floor is where all the fun is, though. A huge number of elite gymnasts prefer this event, and that means we’re seeing more innovation here than anywhere else in the gym. Great Britain’s Jessica Gadirova is the one to watch — she’s a floor specialist and should deliver one of the more difficult routines in the history of the event.

The women’s artistic gymnastics competition begins with the team all-around final July 30 at 12:15 p.m. ET. The individual all-around final is Aug. 1 at 12:15 p.m. ET, and the event finals are Aug. 3-5.