Biles, Chiles, Finish Their Paris 2024 Runs With Silver and Bronze

PARIS — Simone Biles’ silver medal in the floor exercise final on Monday tied her for the second-most decorated female gymnast in Olympic history. Her fourth medal in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games gave her a total of 11, matching Vera Caslavska of Czechoslovakia. For a second time, Biles won medals in team, all-around, vault and floor exercise after doing so at her Olympic debut in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

After her withdrawal from the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, many questioned if they would ever see Biles return to competion. Biles had already solidified her place as one of the best to ever grace the sport. Before returning to competition in 2023, she had 18 world championship medals and seven Olympic medals. Additionally, she had four original skills named after her. Despite being etched in the history books regardless of if she returned or not, Biles chose to fight her way back to another Olympics.

“It means the world that I could come back out here,” said Biles. “To compete on an international stage again, representing my country. I couldn’t have asked for a better Olympics Games, a better support system, better teammates.”

Biles’ time in Paris has been rich with redemption. She started with leading the U.S. back to the top of the podium in the team competition after winning silver in Tokyo. Biles followed that up by earning two individual gold medals in all-around and vault. Expectations were high for Biles heading into the final day of competition, where she was a gold medal contender in both beam and floor. But in what she classified as an “odd” beam final, Biles recorded a fall, as did five other finalists, including Suni Lee.

Biles and Lee finished fifth and sixth overall with matching scores of 13.100, with Biles ranking a place above Lee as her execution score was higher.

The crowd response in Bercy Arena throughout beam was unlike anything the coaches and athletes had ever experienced. An environment where the gymnasts usually hear cheering or background noise was replaced by an eerie silence, with the only noise being audience members shushing any cheers — including those coming from the gymnasts.

“Beam is always the most stressful,” said Biles. “Honestly, we do better in environments when there's noise going on because it feels most like practice. Today, I heard some of the Android ringtones going off and camera flickers or whatever that was… You’re trying to stay in your zone. Then people start cheering and then the shushing gets louder... it was really weird and awkward. We asked several times if we could have some music, or some background noise, so I'm not really sure what happened… but none of us liked it.”

With one more medal still on the line, Biles returned to the competition area less than two hours later for the floor final alongside teammate Jordan Chiles. As with every final thus far, she was the gold-medal favorite after qualifying seven-tenths ahead of her toughest competition this past week, Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade. Chiles ranked right behind Andrade in qualifying to make her first individual Olympic final.

Biles appeared to have some difficulty on landings during warm-ups, possibly because of the strained calf she’s been dealing with in recent weeks.

“We warmed up and waited a while in the hallway,” said head coach Cecile Landi, explaining the transition from the warm-up gym to the main floor for finals. “I think she was a little bit cold. When she punched (off the floor) the first time, there was little bit of that pain. But afterwards, she said she felt fine.”

Once Biles began her routine, the pain did not appear to cause her any lack of power. In fact, it was quite the opposite. She had two large bounces out of bounds on her second and fourth tumbling passes, resulting in three tenths of a deduction for each. The errors significantly impacted Biles’ overall score. Her 14.133 put her just behind Andrade’s leading score of 14.166.

“Emotionally and physically, it’s been a long week,” Landi said of Biles’ performances. “She made some mistakes on floor. But when you make mistakes and are still a silver medalist, that’s pretty cool.”

In a day that Landi described as a “rollercoaster,” the most suspenseful moment came on the very last floor routine of the day.

Chiles, the final competitor, originally recorded a 13.666 for her fan-favorite routine. The score put her in fifth behind the 13.700s, owned by Romania’s Ana Barbosu and Sabrina Maneca-Voinea, with Barbosu ranking above her teammate due to a higher execution score.

However, Landi submitted an inquiry, challenging the judges’ original difficulty score given to Chiles, as she felt that one of the leap elements in the routine had not been awarded its full difficulty value. The result of the challenge was heard before Chiles could even see it. A massive wave of cheers confirmed that Chiles’ difficulty score had been boosted by one-tenth, making her new score a 13.766, good enough for the bronze medal.

“I didn’t even realize my coaches put in an inquiry,” said Chiles. “So, when it came through, I was very proud of myself. It was my first event final and it’s my first event medal. That is crazy.”

Hanna Barton is writing for Team USA as a graduate student in the Sports Capital Journalism Program at Indiana University Indianapolis.