Artistic gymnastics at the Paris Olympic Games came to a dramatic end Monday, as Simone Biles won the silver medal in the floor exercise final.
She won her 11th Olympic medal and seventh gold in Paris, leaving her within striking range of Soviet legend Larisa Latynina’s nine golds, the most of any gymnast.
Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade bested Biles for the floor gold, becoming the nation’s most decorated Olympian. In one of the most dramatic twists of the Games, Jordan Chiles won her first individual Olympic medal after appealing her score, adding a floor bronze to her two team medals: a Paris gold and a silver in Tokyo.
“Obviously, it wasn’t my best performance,” Biles said after the meet. “But at the end of the day, whoever medaled medaled, and that’s what’s so exciting, because you just never know, it’s gymnastics.”
“I’ve accomplished way more than my wildest dreams, not just at this Olympics, but in the sport, so I can’t be mad at my performances,” she added. “A couple years ago, I didn’t think I’d be back here at an Olympic Games, so competing and then walking away with four medals … I’m pretty proud of myself.”
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Biles’ performance in Paris — which was dubbed the team’s “Redemption Tour” after taking silver in Tokyo — was an exultant return to the Games for the gymnast widely regarded as the greatest in history, with plenty of records shattered along the way.
In Tuesday’s team event, she officially became the most decorated American gymnast in the history of the Olympic Games, surpassing “Magnificent Seven” member Shannon Miller’s seven-medal record.
She will leave Paris with four medals: three golds and a silver. She had the potential to win five medals but fell off the balance beam in Monday’s final. An Olympic gold in that event has long eluded her and slipped out of her grasp once again in her third Olympic appearance.
Biles also came up just short in Rio, nabbing four golds before a balance beam wobble on the last day of competition landed her a bronze.
Biles won beam bronze once again in Tokyo. It was the only individual medal she gleaned from those Games, a triumph after she reworked her routine to remove all twisting elements. A battle with the “twisties” affected her time in Tokyo, which did not turn out how she, or the world, expected, but Biles has said that bronze medal “means more than all the golds.”
Her withdrawal from multiple events in Tokyo brought on a deluge of criticism toward Biles, but she maintained that she made the best decision for her mental and physical well-being.
“I think that putting your mental health first and taking time for yourself, whether you’re in sports or not, it creates longevity in sports specifically, but also for just a better, healthier lifestyle,” Biles said Monday. “So I think it’s really important that we put our mental health first and then everything else will fall into place.”
Of any lingering haters, Biles said, “They’re really quiet now.”
She said “there is nothing left” to accomplish on Team USA’s redemption tour.
“We did our job. … It’s hard but we did it,” Biles said Monday.
Biles has remained a champion for mental health awareness and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Joe Biden in 2022, becoming the youngest person to receive the award at 25.
Upon reclaiming her Olympic all-around title Thursday, Biles posted a photo on Instagram with the caption, “mental health matters.”
Her all-around win made her the first American and just the third gymnast in history to win the Olympic all-around gold medal more than once. The two others — Larisa Latynina of the then-Soviet Union and Věra Čáslavská of Czechoslovakia — last competed in the 1960s.
Many assumed that Biles would retire after her Paris “redemption tour” came to an end. But she said Saturday for the first time that the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028 could be in her future.
Those Games will be the first domestic Summer Olympics since Atlanta in 1996. If Biles makes it to that event, she will be 31.
“Never say never,” Biles said. “The next Olympics is at home, so you just never know, but I am getting really old.”
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