Olympics 2024: Simone Biles, U.S. shrug off ghosts of Tokyo Games with emphatic gold medal dominance

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PARIS — Simone Biles was soaring and twisting through the air. It was majestic, a near-perfectly executed Cheng vault that she landed with just a small hop … and then a smile.

Over on the United States women’s gymnastics team bench, Jordan Chiles leapt up in the air in celebration. Biles hitting a Cheng, a less-difficult vault than her more daring Biles II, wouldn’t normally generate such excitement.

This was the Olympic team finals, though. This, three years ago in Tokyo on vault in the team competition, is where it all broke suddenly wrong for Simone Biles.

She was attempting a Yurchenko with 2.5 twists only to get lost in the air. She was lucky to land without physical injury. The attempt was so awkward and out of sorts, her teammates covered their mouths in shock. Simone doesn’t miss like that.

Biles immediately dropped out of the competition and the United States slipped to a silver medal.

She had made a comeback since then, winning the 2023 world championships and lifting the sport with more and more difficult routines. She qualified first here. She is the best gymnast in the world.

Yet … Chiles and everyone else still wanted to know if she could do it under Olympic rings.

“Hallelujah,” Chiles said she was thinking. “No flashback, no nothing.”

Just a team-high 14.900, pushing the Americans to the lead after the first rotation and well on their way to winning gold by a comfortable 5.802 over Italy.

Simone was officially back. So were the Americans.

“I was relieved,” Biles acknowledged. “I was like, ‘Woof,’ because [there were] no flashbacks or anything. I did feel a lot of relief. And once I finished bar [on the next rotation], I was like, ‘Oh yeah, we are going to do this.’”

Indeed they did.

The Americans billed this as a “Redemption Tour,” regaining the team gold that they feel belongs to them after U.S. triumphs in 2012 and 2016, not to mention every world championship team gold since 2011. The Russians, who beat them in 2021, aren’t here due to IOC sanctions concerning the country’s military action in Ukraine, but it’s unlikely anyone was defeating Team USA on Tuesday.

Not when Simone Biles is at her best.

“I was like, ‘OK, all she needs to do is be normal [and we will win],’” Chiles said. “She’s the greatest of all greats so it was kind of like, ‘OK, we are about to really do this and go out there and be us.’”

Tuesday’s competition was as much a party as elite international gymnastics can get. The gymnasts cheered. They danced. They flexed and celebrated and pumped their fists along the way.

All four of the team members who competed — Biles, Chiles, Jade Carey and Suni Lee — were veterans of the Tokyo Games, where isolation, masks and empty stadiums sucked the life out of the experience. There were no fans. There was no family.

This time they were going to bask in every roaring cheer and “U-S-A” chant.

The Americans didn’t win by the absurd 9.59 margin as the 2016 superteam did in Rio de Janeiro but this was never in doubt. The U.S. scored the highest of any country on all four disciplines.

It was so lopsided that when Biles stepped onto the floor for the final performance of the final rotation, she needed a score of just 8.865 to secure gold. The lowest score of any gymnast on floor the entire night was a 12.600. Biles might be able to do that blindfolded.

“I kind of knew as long as I landed on my feet on all passes we were going to be good,” Simone said. “So as soon I stepped out of bounds [on her first pass], I was like, ‘Ah, well, there’s a line, but I guess it isn’t that big a deal.’”

It was that kind of night, one that was so missing in Tokyo where the pressure, the “twisties,” the reaction and the pandemic made everything tense. Everyone expected a Biles coronation and a haul of medals. Instead it was a nightmare.

Now, well, now everything is possible again. She’ll enter Thursday’s all-around as the heavy favorite over Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade and American teammate Suni Lee, who won all-around gold in Biles’ absence in 2021. After that, potentially three more individual medals.

This was the Biles her teammates were dying to see. The confident one. The fun-loving one.

The one whose personality was so buoyant that she even changed the culture within national team camps by making former team director Márta Károlyi, a product of the old Romanian regimented system, lighten up and let them enjoy the experience. With talent like that, what was Karolyi going to do?

“Simone has always had an amazing personality,” Chiles said.

It’s what drove this team. Biles tries to make everyone feel equal, but her talent stands apart. Consider that Lee, merely the reigning Olympic champion and currently a top-three gymnast in the world, finds herself watching Biles in awe.

“She will go into a pass and I’ll just be like, ‘How the heck does she do that?’” Lee said. “And [U.S. coach] Cécile [Canqueteau-Landi] will say, ‘I don’t know.’

“No one knows.”

What the Americans know is they have her and no one else does. And that gives them an attitude that maybe no other U.S. Olympic team ever has. This is a veteran group — four veterans from Tokyo, four 20-somethings, including the 27-year-old Biles.

They aren’t nervous teenagers or inexperienced gym kids. They have life experience — college, marriage, ups and downs.

When they decided to choose a team name — as gold-medal American squads traditionally do — they didn’t go safe and sweet like previous groups: The Magnificent Seven of 1996, the Fierce Five of 2012, the Final Five of 2016.

They went bold. They went with a message.

“F Around and Find Out,” Biles revealed the name to be.

Yeah, the world is finding out.