Simone Biles pulled out of the women’s gymnastics team final
Biles withdrew from Tuesday’s final due to a medical issue, according to a statement from USA Gymnastics. The organization said she will be assessed daily to determine medical clearance for future competitions.
Biles bailed out of her Amanar in the vault and only completed a 1.5 twist on a 2.5-twisting Yurchenko, then stumbled backward on the landing. She had previously posted the best score in the vault during the all-around qualifiers. Jordan Chiles had the best score out of the Americans with a 14.666 and Grace McCallum had a 14.300.
After Rotation 1 where the U.S. and ROC competed in the vault, the ROC leads the women’s team event with a score of 43.799, while the U.S. is in second with a 42.732.
As Simone Biles walked off the podium following her opening floor routine of her Tokyo Olympics, she laughed bitterly to herself. She had overpowered her third tumbling pass so much that she ended up rebounding the floor and flying so far out of bounds that she cleared the raised floor. She was not happy. But what initially seemed to be an aberration in her first rotation of USA’s qualifying round turned out to be a reflection of the whole day.
With every passing rotation, the errors for USA piled up, culminating in an event that has not occurred over their past decade of dominance – for the first time since 2010, USA qualified in second for a major team final after scoring 170.562 as Russian Olympic Committee finished the day in the lead with 171.629.
Although Biles led all around qualifiers with a score of 57.731, she finished just three tenths ahead of Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade, who scored 57.399 and her surge in the final rotation very nearly led to her overtaking Biles for first place. Sunisa Lee, Biles’s teammate, finished third with 57.166 points. Following her mistake on floor, Biles also stepped off the vaulting mat on her Cheng vault and then she took four large steps back on her beam dismount.
Her teammates Grace McCallum and Sunisa Lee also contributed numerous minor errors while Jordan Chiles, who had been brilliantly consistent throughout this year, suffered her worst meet of the year and finished with a score of 52.698. There were, of course, still moments of supremacy from Biles dotted throughout the meet and none more so than in her dreamy 2 ½ Yurchenko vault which scored 15.400. Despite a large forward leap worth .3 points, she received an execution score of 9.6.