The U.S. gymnastics teams have etched their names in history at the 2024 Paris Olympics, with both the men’s and women’s teams delivering fantastic performances to assure their place on the podium.
Men’s Team Wins Bronze After 16 Years
For the first time in 16 years, the U.S. men’s gymnastics team has clinched an Olympic medal. Fueled by a resurgent performance from national champion Brody Malone, who competed in five of the six events, Team USA held off Great Britain and Ukraine to win bronze. Japan surged to gold in the final rotation, while China took silver.
This marks the first time the American men have been on the Olympic podium since 2008, when Jonathan Horton led them to bronze. Impressively, they finished closer to second-place China (1.3 points off) than to fourth-place Great Britain (2.2 points).
Stephen Nedoroscik, a pommel horse specialist, played a crucial role in securing the bronze with a solid performance on the very last routine of the night. Every member of the team hit clutch routines, including Paul Juda and Asher Hong on vault and Frederick Richard on high bar.
The Americans finished fifth at each of the previous three Summer Olympics, and they finished fifth again in Saturday’s qualifying. The difference on Monday largely revolved around Malone, who redeemed himself after a disappointing qualifying round.
Malone, 24, had been expected to qualify for the all-around individual final and perhaps even contend for a medal, but he had a dreadful showing in qualifying – with falls on pommel horse, floor, and even high bar, the event in which he won a world championship in 2022. It was such a jarring performance that some of his teammates later said he apologized to them afterward.
“I know Brody’s a dog and a competitor,” Hong said. “So I know he’s going to come into team finals and full send.”
And he did. Malone improved upon or matched his performances on every apparatus, including a significantly better showing on high bar that helped keep the U.S. ahead of its bronze rivals. After falling twice on the apparatus in qualifying, he looked much more comfortable – and stuck the landing – for a score that was nearly two full points higher than his score Saturday.
Hong, Juda, and Richard, meanwhile, each competed in four events – each pumping up their teammates, and the crowd, between routines. Chants of “U-S-A!” rang out at Bercy Arena at multiple points over the course of the night.
“Once we got to pommel horse, that’s when it became real,” said Syque Caesar, who also coaches Malone and Nedoroscik. “We started crunching numbers and we’re like, ‘Just stay on this horse and we can do this.'”
Although China and Japan were long considered the favorites, the U.S. knew for months that it would benefit from the absence of Russia, which is banned from team competitions at these Olympics because of its invasion of Ukraine. The Americans knew the bronze medal was there for the taking. And they took it.
In arguably the most pressure-packed situation that one could imagine in men’s gymnastics − the last routine of the last rotation of the Olympic final − Nedoroscik delivered in a big way Monday night, putting together a smooth, confident showing on pommel horse that wrapped up the bronze medal for the U.S. men’s gymnastics team.
“It was just the greatest moment of my life, I think,” Nedoroscik said.
Women’s Team Redeems with Gold
The U.S women also medaled redeeming themselves from their disappointing Tokyo games. The U.S. women’s artistic gymnastics team made a triumphant return to the top, winning gold in the team finals. This victory marked an incredible comeback for Team USA and the history-making Simone Biles.
Italy took second place, ending the finals with 165.494 points to Team USA’s 171.296. It was Italy’s first Olympic medal for women’s gymnastics in almost a century. Brazil’s team won bronze, finishing just shy of a point behind Italy, for their first medal ever in women’s gymnastics.
Biles and Chiles took part in the uneven bars, vault, balance beam, and floor exercise events, while Lee competed in every round except the vault, which was Carey’s only event. Just one member of Team USA didn’t participate in Tuesday’s competition — 16-year-old Hezly Rivera, who’s making her Olympic debut this year and still accepted a gold medal alongside her teammates at the awards ceremony.
Lee was the first American gymnast to perform on the floor and completed a strong routine with visible excitement as she left the mat. Her family cheered uproariously from the stands, as did the rest of the stadium. Lee earned an impressive 13.9 for the exercise, which is evaluated out of 14 points. Chiles nailed her floor routine, too, inching closer to that perfect score with 13.966.
Biles closed out the finals with a spectacular floor routine performed to a full-on standing ovation. It was arguably the most anticipated showing of Tuesday’s team competition, and Biles delivered. Her routine included several of Biles’ trademarked gymnastics moves, including her first namesake, a double layout with a half-twist, and a triple-double.
The exercise had solidified Team USA’s victory before Biles’ score was even revealed. She blew a kiss to the crowd as people chanted, “USA!”
Lee and Biles both delivered solid performances on the balance beam that earned high marks, critically, after Chiles fell from the equipment during her beam routine, which came before theirs. Her fall was the only notable error from Team USA throughout the finals, where the American athletes brought top-tier routines that continued to push them ahead of their competitors in every round.
Biles, 27, made her highly anticipated return last weekend in the qualifying rounds and dominated, despite a calf injury that caused her to limp. Women’s gymnastics coach Cecille Landi, a former Olympian for France, told reporters after the qualifying session that Biles had tweaked her calf a few weeks ago and was on the mend.
The coach noted that Biles had no intention to leave the competition, saying, “Never in her mind.”
Team USA finished Sunday’s qualification session with an impressive score of 172.296, putting them at the front of the pack heading into the final, with Biles herself leaving qualifiers as the leading individual scorer across all of the competing teams.
Biles, heralded as the Greatest of All Time, or G.O.A.T., in gymnastics, is currently in her third Olympics. It’s her first since experiencing the “twisties,” a phenomenon where gymnasts lose their sense of place in the air, which forced her to drop out of multiple events during the Tokyo Olympics.
Tuesday’s win makes Biles the most decorated American Olympic gymnast, surpassing Shannon Miller’s seven-medal haul, with the team gold her eighth Olympic medal. That also ties her with Anton Heida, a 1904 Olympian, for the most gold medals earned by an American gymnast.
The U.S. gymnasts have called this Olympics their “redemption tour,” with the team gold as their shared goal. Four of the five members of this team competed in Tokyo, and they all felt they had more they wanted to accomplish. Biles had the most high-profile letdown, but even Sunisa Lee, the reigning Olympic all-around champion, left disappointed by some of the medals she didn’t win. Chiles made several mistakes on her sport’s biggest stage in 2021. And Jade Carey won gold on floor, but a stumble on the runway kept her from vying for a vault medal.
After the chaos of Tokyo, Tuesday’s team final was pleasantly uneventful. After Biles endured an injury scare during Sunday’s qualifying, the anxiety over how she would perform here only heightened. But with her lower leg taped, Biles competed with her usual power and precision. Biles, who said adrenaline takes her mind away from the pain, sealed the gold medal with her floor routine in the final rotation.
Biles and the U.S. team had been excellent all evening. Chiles’s fall on her difficult front pike salto mount onto the beam was the only blemish on an otherwise fantastic performance. With Russia banned from competing as a team in Paris, the United States had no serious challengers, and its final score of 171.296 left it nearly six points ahead of Italy, which won the silver in its best women’s gymnastics team finish since 1928. Brazil, headlined by Rebeca Andrade, won bronze, the country’s first Olympic team medal in women’s gymnastics.
The U.S. women stood far above their peers, storming out to a lead that kept growing. This type of performance — not what happened in Tokyo — is the norm for the U.S. women’s gymnastics program that has been the standard-bearer in the sport for more than a decade.
Since Biles made her competitive return last year, she has been fantastic. Sometimes her difficult skills generate so much buzz that they overshadow her consistency. That’s the greatness of Biles: She does the hardest skills in the world with superb execution and hardly makes major mistakes.
They have climbed to their competitive peaks in the moments when it mattered most. The fifth gymnast, 16-year-old Hezly Rivera, did not compete. She was the only one who wasn’t part of the Tokyo squad. For the others, the value of the gold medal was rooted in their past Olympic experience.
What has changed, for Biles and the other returning Olympians, is what they’ve been through. This medal was proof of redemption.
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