It’s exaggerated, but not too much; She flies so high, with so much strength, so much energy, on the vaulting horse, that it seems that Simone Biles, determined and generous, wants to reach the unreachable air conditioning generator to, by switching it off, do a favour to the frozen humanity in shorts, because the sun and the heat have returned to Paris. The artificial cold is unnecessary in the air. Enthusiasm of excited fans who break into howls just by hearing the words Simone Biles over the loudspeakers. Sunday at the Arena of Bercy. The place to be. Tom Cruise, Ariana Grande, Snoop Dogg, rapper and enthusiastic Olympian, Anna Wintour, goddess creator of Vogue and its covers, which so court the gymnast. It was a non-stop bilehysteria the stands of the gigantic venue were full.
Sitting on a box in the doorway, Simone Biles yawns. Her ponytail, vertical, defiant. Extraordinarily above the noise, so above everything, is her talent.
She is waiting for her turn to return to the Olympic hall three years after her turbulent time in Tokyo. The jacket of her tracksuit hides the exaggeratedly bright sequins of her leotard, which dazzles. In an orderly fashion, the national teams and individual gymnasts enter the hall, seeking to qualify for the women’s finals (team events on Tuesday; individual all-around on Thursday; apparatus events from Saturday to Monday). The last country to enter is the United States; the last gymnast is the 27-year-old Texan. The hoarse cries are getting louder. Hysteria, yes. Chance, which is destiny, has chosen that the first apparatus Biles faces on her return is the balance beam, the same apparatus on which she said goodbye to Tokyo with a bronze medal. In Japan, before, she had only competed in the team qualification and, two vaults, no more, in the final. Then, 10 days of absence and depression. Of searching.
She doesn’t fall off the bar, which she climbed up on more nervously, perhaps, than she would have liked. A huge sigh of relief that can be heard all over the world closes her performance, and she shakes hands happily with Cécile and Laurent Landi, young French people, always lively, who coach her and hug her, and she is almost sobbing on their lap. Then she bursts into a great laugh of happiness.
Simone Biles is back. She is the leader of a team of the United States, her friends from Tokyo, the bombshell Jordan Chiles, her accomplice Jade Carey, Sunisa Lee and the newcomer, the long-haired 16-year-old Hezly Rivera, who dominates the qualification (172.296 points), ahead of Italy (166.861) and China (166.821). Biles, with 59.556 points, is almost two more than the wonderful Brazilian Rebeca Andrade, second, and almost three and a half more than Sunisa Lee, the Olympic champion in Tokyo after the queen’s temporary abdication. So on Thursday, for the first time in history, the last two Olympic champions (Biles triumphed in Rio 16) will face each other in a final. The winner will be the first, after the Czech Vera Caslavska, champion in Tokyo 64 and Mexico 68, to have won the all-around competition at two Olympic Games.
Biles also qualified for the finals of three of the four apparatus events – to which will be added the all-around and team events, for a total of five finals. She was the best on vault (15.300 points) and floor (14.600) and second on the beam (14.733). She finished ninth on the uneven bars. The wonderful Brazilian Rebeca Andrade, Olympic runner-up in Tokyo, qualified on the same three apparatus events. Perhaps to forget the French debacle, perhaps affected by the presence in the stands of Antoine Griezmann and personified in the various falls – on the parallel bars, beam and floor – of their best gymnast, Martinican Melanie de Jesus dos Santos, the pavilion was transformed into a Brazilian fan base that gave itself, body, soul and clapping drunk with happiness to Andrade and her friends, who qualified fourth in their team events. Biles-Andrade: This will be the duel of the century between two gymnasts who admire each other and are competing in their third Olympic Games.
Balance for Biles is a relative concept that tends more towards waste, excess of energy, enthusiasm, desire, than moderate savings, restraint of emotion. Once over the bar, she faced the floor, the enormous carpet of her capacity for expression, her life. So overflowing, so nervously fast, so full, so atomic did she trace the first crazy diagonal, that triple somersault with a double twist so unique to her—she repeated the legendary jump that makes her unique: the only woman to do it in competition—that she went beyond the limits of the yellow canvas, and her left foot, bandaged with a discreet brown taping, landed on the dark blue that borders it. Although surrounded by thousands of scrutinizing eyes, the gymnasts do not perform for anyone other than themselves and the judges, but the atmosphere pushes, and in Bercy, the United States was pushed a lot, and the personality, and the urgent rhythm of Taylor Swift that marked her steps and jumps. And perhaps the pain in her left Achilles, which makes her limp towards the vaulting horse. The object on which she lost all sense of time and space in Tokyo and on which she began her redemption with Biles II – a double pike somersault after a Yurchenko entry, a pingoleta in front of the springboard and a backflip – at the World Championships in Antwerp. Dramatically, theatrically, after rehearsing the vault, she returns to the starting point, 30 metres ahead, on all fours down the hall, and finishes the walk by hopping on one leg. Cécile Landi, her coach, explained afterwards that the gymnast only had a little pain in her calf, but that there was never any talk of quitting or altering her routines and vaults. “We told her to remind herself that she is capable of doing it,” Landi said.
She does it. With the same excess she flies in her Biles II. She doesn’t get lost. She touches the sky and comes back, and falls so hard that she has to take a step back to land. Liberated, confident, she goes over the top on the parallel bars, and when she finishes the routine she explodes. Pure joy. Happiness. She laughs out loud and dances. Pure Biles. Pure magic. The balance of excess, fortunately.
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