First Sunisa, then Rebecca, then Simone. They competed in the order in which their performances in the qualifications had led them. According to the protocol, the six best gymnasts perform in what is known as the Olympic order or rotation: vault, uneven parallel bars, balance beam and floor. They change their starting order in each rotation so that the gymnast with the best score in the qualifications, and therefore the one with the best chance of winning the gold medal, performs last on the floor with all eyes on her.
After Tokyo Olympic champion Sunisa Lee, Rebeca Andrade came out on vault and performed a masterful cheng. The cheng entrance is of the omelianchik type (a round off before touching the springboard to approach the vaulting horse on her back, like in a yurchenko, but performing a half turn before reaching the platform), so that the somersault after the repulsion of the arms is performed forward. Rebeca rose and, something characteristic of her, remained suspended in the air for a fraction of a second before turning longitudinally one and a half times. That suspension allows you to take advantage of the laws of physics to do textbook longitudinal turns (pirouettes).
Simone Biles knows her cheng isn’t as good as Andrade’s, so she used her ace in the hole: the Biles II. We saw it on the day of the qualifications and it came out very similar: a Yurchenko-type entry and two and a half rotations on the transverse axis (back flips) in a piked position (bent at the waist and with the legs stretched out) backwards. Only she does it. As in the qualifications, she over-rotates it by having to take a step back with a jump to stop herself. It’s a minor mistake on a vault like this, which has a difficulty value of eight-tenths higher than Andrade’s.
On the uneven bars, things are very even. Rebeca Andrade is usually better than Simone Biles in terms of execution, and today both performed exercises with the same difficulty value. Rebeca performed multiple linked elements that give the exercise a few tenths of a bonus for links: turn close to the band, vertical turn, release, transition to the low bar, transition to the high bar… She performed all of that linked, although with some problems in that transition to the high bar (the van leeuwen: a turn stepped on the lower band to come out propelled backwards and grab the high bar after having done a half turn), with her face very close to the top bar. She continued with another release, another turn (this time stepping on the bar), another turn on the handstand and the exit of a double back somersault tucked with a pirouette. Simone Biles has a similar exercise, but without as many links and resorting to a very difficult exit: a turn on the handstand linked with a fabrichnova (double back somersault tucked with a double pirouette). It’s like Andrade’s dismount, but with a twist. However, in addition to the usual tenths of a second that Biles usually misses on this apparatus due to incorrect posture, she was given more tenths of a second and a full penalty point for bending her knees, touching her feet on the floor and stopping in the pak: the transition from the high to the low band that consists of an extended back flip moving forward.
With the atmosphere heated, Biles in third position and Andrade in the lead, the group of the best moved to the dreaded balance beam, so easy to fail. Biles opened the rotation, giving us a little heart-pounding in her triple Cossack twist (with the supporting leg in a squat and the other extended) and in her no-hands wheel: two of the elements in which she had already had problems in these Games, nothing too serious. Everything else went well. A double back somersault exit tucked with a pirouette. A very difficult exit that she does easily and that would help her get back into first position. Rebeca Andrade closed the rotation. Her starting score is three tenths lower than Biles’ and in her acrobatic series she had a significant imbalance. But she recovered, continued with fluidity and finished with a double pike (bent at the waist and legs extended) that was slightly under-rotated but that was enough to keep up with Biles.
The competition was decided on the floor. Rebeca Andrade delighted us with her already popular Baile de favela, but with some inaccuracies and a one-footed exit outside the limits of the practicable in her first acrobatic series: a pirouette backflip followed by a round-off, a flicflac and a double pike backflip with a pirouette. She gave us a double pike backflip, and a good double pike backflip with a pirouette. Some of us knew that, with a little effort from Biles, Rebeca Andrade would take the silver.
And Biles did her best to give us her best floor routine of these Games so far. Accompanied by music from Taylor Swift, she was recognized for all the difficulties and executed all her signature elements without a hitch, such as the Biles I (double tucked somersault with triple pirouette) and the Biles II (double pike somersault with a half twist at the end).
First Simone, then Rebecca, then Sunisa. This is how the podium of the women’s all-around artistic gymnastics competition in Paris looked like.
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