Simone Biles won silver in the gymnastics floor routine final at the Paris Olympics on Monday, wrapping an extraordinary return to the Games with her fourth medal.
The iconic athlete scored 14.133 after two deductions for landing out of bounds.
Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade, who was up before her, scored 14.166, securing the gold.
“I think Rebeca got this one,” Biles said moments before her own score was announced.
Biles’ fellow U.S. competitor Jordan Chiles, who has a gold and silver medal to her name from the team competitions in Paris and Tokyo, came in third to win bronze.
She had initially placed fifth, with Romania’s Ana Bărbosu in line for the bronze, but a last-minute upgrade of Chiles’ score from 13.666 to 13.766 put her on the podium.
An elated Biles and Chiles were seen embracing after the surprise announcement.
Biles said before the Games that Andrade “scares” her the most out of her competition. The two have been seen applauding and hugging one another throughout the competitions despite their rivalry.
Biles had fallen back while landing her signature triple double tumbling pass during the warmup. Afterwards, her team re-taped her calf, which she had tweaked during the qualifiers on July 28.
In 2016, Biles soared to global superstardom when she competed in the Rio Olympics team event and four individual competitions, winning gold in all but the balance beam, where she took bronze.
“I’m not the next Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps. I’m the first Simone Biles,” she told reporters at the time.
Due to concerns about her mental health, which manifested in a disorienting phenomenon known in the gymnastics world as the “twisties,” Biles dropped out of the Tokyo Olympics during the team event. She went on to pull out of all the individual events too, except the balance beam, where she won a bronze medal.
Her decision sparked conversations around the world about prioritizing mental health and self care, especially in the sporting world, where elite athletes often face immense mental pressures on top of grueling physical ones.
She has since become an advocate in that space and has spoken candidly about going to regular therapy to process past traumas as part of her journey back to fighting shape.
Biles added three more gold medals to her collection in Paris, missing out on a podium finish just once, in the balance beam event earlier on Monday morning. After winning the coveted all-around event on Thursday, Biles wrote simply on Instagram, “mental health matters.”
Biles and teammates Chiles, Suni Lee, Jade Carey and Hezly Rivera dubbed themselves the Golden Girls after their triumph in the team event last week in a nod to a remarkable fact: they are the oldest American team to compete at the Olympics since 1952.
At 27, Biles is also the oldest woman to win an Olympic medal in 76 years — and she’s still not ruling out 2028.
Most Popular
Comments / 0