The women of Team USA’s gymnastics team capped off an incredibly strong showing at the Paris Olympics on Monay, set to return home with an assortment of medals from various apparatuses.
Seasoned veteran and standout athlete Simone Biles struggled somewhat on her last day of competition, earning a fifth-place spot in the balance beam final after sustaining a fall. Biles and her teammate Jordan Chiles finished out strong in the floor competition, however, earning the silver and bronze medals respectively after Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade finished first. While standing atop the podium, Biles and Chiles bowed to Andrade in a show of respect. “It was just the right thing to do,” Biles said, according to the Associated Press. “She’s queen.”
Paris was nothing if not a redemption tour for Biles, who chose to drop out of her last Olympic Games in Tokyo after she was plagued by the “twisties,” a disorienting dissonance between the mind and the body. “I’ve accomplished way more than my wildest dreams, not just at this Olympics, but in this sport,” Biles said at a press conference on Monday, per PEOPLE. “So I can’t be mad at my performances. A couple of years ago I didn’t think I’d be back here at an Olympic game. So competing and then walking away with four medals, I’m not mad about it. I’m pretty proud of myself and it’s always so exciting to compete.”
“Obviously it wasn’t my best performances, but at the end of the day, whoever medaled, medaled, and that’s what’s so exciting, because you just never know with gymnastics,” she said. “I’m not very upset or anything about my performance at the Olympics. I’m actually very happy, proud and even more excited that it’s over, the stress of it.”
Biles added three gold medals — the team all-around, the individual all-around and the vault final — to her collection while in Paris, cementing her place as the most decorated American Olympics gymnast of all time.
“We did our job, you know what I’m saying? It’s hard, but we did it,” Biles said. “It means the world that I could come back out here and compete on an international stage again, representing my country. I couldn’t have asked for a better Olympic Games, better support system, better teammates. So yeah, thank you. Thank you, Paris.”