Simone Biles said goodbye to the 2024 Paris Olympics on Monday, adding another silver to her list of achievements, but failing to equal Soviet gymnast Larissa Latynina’s record as the most decorated gymnast in history.
A small fall on the balance beam and the power of Brazilian Rebeca Andrade, who won gold on the floor ahead of Biles, snatched away the two golds she needed, in front of a devoted crowd in the French capital.
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In Paris 2024, the most equal Games in Olympic history, only American swimmer Katie Ledecky will have equaled Latynina’s nine gold medals and her record as the woman with the most titles at the Games.
But Biles is not leaving empty-handed. In addition to the four golds from Rio 20216, she has another three from Paris 2024, as well as the silver on the floor, and the feeling of having overcome the tragedies of Tokyo 2020, when she dropped out.
Andrade also won her fourth medal at these Games – after a bronze and two silvers – and her sixth Olympic podium finish in total, making her the most medallist in her country.
The podium of the last artistic gymnastics event in Paris-2024 was closed by the American Jordan Chiles, bronze.
Andrade’s second Olympic gold medal, which follows her triumph in the vault three years ago in Tokyo, sent the excited green-and-yellow fans into a frenzy, after a week of waiting to finally sing their anthem at the Arena Bercy.
A historic gymnast for her country, Andrade climbed onto the podium with her compatriots chanting her name and greeted by the reverence of Chiles and Biles, who have always singled out the Brazilian as her most feared rival.
Biles’ fall, which resulted in her finishing fifth, and three more, unexpectedly crowned Italy with two medals. Gold for the solid Alice d’Amato, a 21-year-old Genoese with experience in Tokyo, and bronze for the Roman Manila Esposito, an Olympic debutant at 18 and European champion who competes in the Iberdrola League with the Xelska club in Palma de Mallorca.
Both train in Brescia, at the CAR where Italy’s team silver medal also came from, under the orders of Enrico Caselli. The silver went to the Chinese Yaqin Zhou, the first to jump onto the burning corridor, and she walked around it, barefoot, without pinkies like others, on tiptoe, delicate and strong, graceful, like a swan on the water, as if that were her only habitat.
A false impression of delicacy that is only broken when an imbalance forces her to put a hand on the bar to avoid falling, and it was a pity. She had too much poetry or feeling, but she lacked the practical sense of the Italians, who combined the useful with the beautiful, those who best understood the sense of balance between risk and benefit in a final in which just by not falling the medal was sure to fall. Or almost sure.
Rebeca Andrade, the last to perform (she did so after Biles) had seen so many tragedies in the previous seven that she failed her connections and did not fall, but she was fourth. She perhaps did not know, but she suspected, that only an hour later, she would rise to the top, revered by Simone Biles, the greatest, and even greater after the falls.
