Yu-es ei! yu is ei! yu is ei! yu is ei!the Paris crowd shouts thunderously, referring to the United States, which is covered in gold.
The Bercy pyramid is collapsing. What is this? Saint Paul, Minnesota? Houston, Texas? Maybe Reno, Nevada?
No, it’s Simone Biles in Paris, conquering.
And with her, a supportive leader on an afternoon in which she sought safety without risks thinking of the team, her close accomplice Jordan Chiles, the pale Jade Carey, the Tokyo Olympic champion, Sunisa Lee, and the fifth woman, the teenage reserve Hezly Rivera. The United States regains the team gold that Russia took three years ago in Tokyo, when Biles disappeared in the air. That is why she herself, with her more defined features, her deeper gaze, the same spectacularity in her jumps and pirouettes, defined Paris as the Games of her redemption. What the 19-year-old Biles enjoyed in Rio, winning four gold medals and one bronze, and what the 24-year-old Biles, in an identity crisis due to the pandemic, lost in Tokyo, the mature and leading Biles recovered in the capital of the Seine. And after topping off the Parisian afternoon with her Taylor Swift-Beyoncé-backflips combination, pirouettes and stratospheric jumps on the floor, and Afro-jazz dancing, under the admiring gaze of Serena Williams in the stands, she was soaked from head to toe in the exclamations of the surrendered fans who cheered on their beloved queen.
On the podium quickly set up on the elastic carpet on the floor – springs, boards, spirofoam— The United States shared the silver medal with, to its right, the Italian team of the magical Manila Esposito, 17 years old, the European champion, the rising star. Esposito, a Neapolitan raised in Rome who competes with Xelska, a club from Palma de Mallorca, in the Spanish League, led Italian women’s gymnastics to its first Olympic team medal since 1928. And, to its left, in bronze, the absolute happiness of Rebeca Andrade and her best friend Flavia Saraiva, tiny and explosive, a bombshell with golden eyebrows, who led the Brazilian team to an Olympic podium for the first time in its history.
Rebeca Andrade, the best gymnast in the world not named Simone Biles, also announced her intention to fight hard on Thursday with the beloved American for the individual title in the all-around competition. She did so with a vault, a cheng (roundoff plus half turn to enter the platform facing forward and somersault in plank with a pirouette and a half), valued with 15,100 points, the highest score of the night, two tenths more than the 14.9 with which he scored cheng Biles opened the night with a performance that was not to be risked by Biles, who did not want to risk her eponymous double somersault in the tent, so difficult that only she is capable of doing it among women. For Brazil, that score from Andrade meant the difference between a medal and a fourth place behind the British. For the United States, Biles’ confident start on the same apparatus, in the same situation (first in the final) in which her head exploded in Tokyo, meant the beginning of a smooth route to gold.
The team was in charge, but it could not count on Jade Carey at 100% (and she was not fielded on the floor, her best apparatus, after she suffered an episode of twistiesof aerospace loss of consciousness) and in which Lee, after a tough period, and two kidney operations, after his coronation in Tokyo, secured just enough.
Biles’ individual score, lower than Sunday’s in qualifying, was the best of the afternoon, and Andrade’s, better than two days ago, was the second best, closer. The fans hope that on Thursday there will be sparks between the two, even brighter than those given off by the American team’s combination of four bars and many stars. The reality is that there will be no match. Biles will probably be the Olympic champion in the all-around competition again, as in Rio 2016. The absence from Tokyo will be definitively closed.
Before the competition began, with the stands already full, the organisers showed two dancers, a woman in a tutu, leotard and pointe, and a man in the style of Michael Jackson. Perhaps inadvertently, they personified in both, and more so when the dancer did a rock and roll on pointe and her partner glided across the floor towards her, what a mature and happy Simone Biles is in the gym, energy that overflows from her 1.42-metre-tall body, and sometimes softness. And also, more difficult, control. Maturity means doing things more confidently, but no less impressively, and always of maximum difficulty, which allows her not to be killed by mistakes.
All night long she was able to concentrate on the balance beam, the floor in anguish. A 10-centimeter-wide plank on which you can dance and wiggle and do somersaults and from which you have to fly by bouncing hard on the 10 centimeters with both feet, which don’t even fit. Biles, overcoming imbalances and tremors. Her bare feet, and her discreet bandage on her aching left calf, pushed her firmly. Redeemed. Leader. Total balance.
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