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What's next for Biles, Lee and the U.S. Olympic gymnastics team?


  • Alyssa Roenigk, Senior Writer, ESPNJuly 29, 2024, 12:46 PM ET

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      Alyssa Roenigk is a senior writer for ESPN whose assignments have taken her to six continents and led her to commit countless acts of recklessness. (Follow @alyroe on Twitter.)

PARIS – Not now, not ever again.

During the bewildering minutes of Sunday’s women’s team qualification, it appeared that Simone Biles was injured and might not be able to continue in the competition. She had begun the competition with a spectacular performance, leading the first rotation on beam, but cut short her warmup on the floor, saying she “felt something” in her left leg after performing one of her namesake tumbling steps. Three years after a mental injury kept Biles out of Tokyo, she again briefly left the stadium with a USA Gymnastics team doctor and spoke to her coaches. But this time, she returned to the floor with her left ankle and calf heavily taped and continued the competition.

“I'm not on the floor. I don't know what's going on,” Chellsie Memmel, a 2008 Olympian and the team's chief strategic officer, said after the competition and before she had a chance to speak with Biles. “It was hard to watch it happen, and on the biggest stage in the world. I can't even imagine what she was feeling. But I trust Simone, I trust her medical team, and I trust her and her coaches to make the best decision for her.”

Biles' coach, Cecile Landi, said Biles, 27, first felt pain in her calf two weeks ago but it didn't bother her again until warming up on the floor Sunday. Her diagnosis is unclear, but it was obvious to anyone in the stadium or watching from home that she was experiencing discomfort, though Landi said Biles never considered pulling out of the competition.

And despite the pain, she still did Simone Biles things, like anchoring the lineup on the floor, performing the world's most difficult routine and earning the highest score of the day on the event.

Then, despite limping through her vault warm-up (and at one point crawling, all the while laughing and joking with her teammates), she performed the world's most difficult vault, the Biles II, and earned an impressive 15.8 and the highest score of the competition (her score on both vaults was 15.3, also topping the qualification).

Landi said Biles' leg started to feel better in the team's final rotation on uneven bars, where the 2016 Olympic all-around champion earned the ninth-highest score of the day and came within one spot of the bars final. She topped the all-around standings with a 59.556 and qualified for three of the four event finals.

“It's amazing,” Memmel said. “She's an exceptional gymnast and person and what she was able to do, despite having pain (or something) in her lower leg, was extraordinary. She competed like she trains. She did her job. Am I surprised? No.”

Biles will lead Team USA into Tuesday's team final and then move on to the all-around and individual event finals. Here's what to know before the medal race begins.

American women remain favorites for team gold

Sunday's performances were far from perfect. There were nerves on beam and too many mistakes on floor. But every team made mistakes, and the qualifying competition is the time to make them. There were also plenty of good things to take away from Sunday's performances. Scratch that: lots of great things.

Three of the top four U.S. athletes made the all-around final, but because of the two-per-country rule, only Biles and reigning Olympic champion Suni Lee will compete in Thursday's all-around final. Lee edged out teammate Jordan Chiles by less than a tenth of a point in the all-around standings.

That means Team USA will arrive at Bercy on Tuesday with plenty of confidence. And consider this: Despite not having a perfect match, the U.S. qualified more than five points ahead of second-place Italy and more than 10 points ahead of fifth-place Japan. With Tuesday's three-up, three-count format, mistakes will be more costly, but they're likely to make fewer errors. “Obviously there are some things we need to work on,” Memmel said, “but we're in a good position.”

On Tuesday, Biles and Chiles are scheduled to compete on all four events: Lee on bars, beam and floor; and Carey on vault.

Jade Carey will be back for Tuesday's team and Saturday's vault final.

Carey's father (and coach), Brian, has a philosophy about how he approaches his daughter's training schedule that over the past year has taken on even greater meaning in his life. “He says, 'The plan is written in pencil,'” Carey told ESPN earlier this month. “He knows that if there's a plan written down and I don't stick to it, I'm going to be really hard on myself. So, he reminds me that if I'm not feeling good that day, we can just erase it and do something else.” In other words: Don't get too attached to expectations and be willing to change plans on the fly.

Brian likely reminded his daughter of that strategy on Sunday when her competition wasn't going as planned and she needed to erase what happened during her floor performance and reset her mind for the vault.

Carey did not compete in the team's first rotation on beam, so her day began on floor, where she hoped to earn a spot in the final and defend her gold from Tokyo. But her performance was poor from the start. She stepped out of bounds three times and fell on her final pass.

In the team’s next rotation on vault, Carey was stellar. She finished behind only Biles and Brazilian Rebecca Andrade, the 2021 Olympic all-around silver medalist, and earned a spot in Saturday’s vault final. After the competition, Carey revealed to Olympics.com that she’s been sick and hasn’t been able to eat for the past few days, which likely contributed to her performance on floor and could be the reason she’s not scheduled to compete on that event in the team final.

Carey has been thinking a lot about the vault final since Tokyo. She was also a medal favorite back then, but she stumbled on the track while attempting a Cheng during the final and fell out of medal contention. “For me, redemption is getting to the vault final and proving that I belong there,” Carey told ESPN in mid-July. “And coming away with a medal this time.”

She's halfway there. And while gold may be out of reach if Biles and Andrade can get good results on the vault, it's time for Carey to figure out that second part of her redemption plan.

The overall final on Thursday will be Simone and Suni's show.

That’s not entirely true, especially if Andrade, who finished second to Biles in qualifying, has anything to say about it. But to American fans, it might seem that way. A little over a year ago, this scenario seemed unlikely, if not impossible. Biles had not yet announced she would return to competition, and Lee had just been diagnosed with two kidney ailments that made it difficult for her to get out of bed — let alone train — some days.

And yet here they are, two of the top three all-around qualifiers and the first Olympic all-around champions to compete against each other in the same Olympic all-around final. “I'm so happy that I never gave up, because there were so many times where I thought about quitting and walking away from the sport because I thought I would never get to this point,” Lee said after making the team last month.

Even more remarkable: Biles, Andrade and Lee were the top three finishers in the all-around final, in the same order, also in Tokyo.

Lee can also win medals on bars, but what she really wants is to stand on the beam podium.

Lee, a bronze medallist in Tokyo on the uneven bars, is once again a favourite to win a medal on the apparatus. But her goal, she has said, is to win her first Olympic medal on beam. “I need a gold on beam,” she said after the trials. It won't be an easy task.

The 2022 NCAA beam champion struggled with her vault in training this week and opted to revert to her split-legged vault during Sunday's qualifying competition. She'll also have to compete with Biles and top-ranked beam athlete Yaqin Zhou of China in next Monday's final.

But just by being part of this team and being in Paris, Lee has achieved more than he thought possible just a short time ago. Why stop now?

Biles could leave Paris with 12 medals. One more would make her the most decorated American gymnast in Olympic history.

Biles hasn't lost an all-around competition in 11 years, and if her calf injury is as innocuous as it was described after Sunday's competition, she'll likely be the all-around champion, the gold medal favorite on floor and vault and a medal favorite on beam.

Because she didn't make it to the uneven bars final, Biles could choose to attempt her new skill, a Weiler and a half, during either the team final or the all-around final. If she successfully completes it, it will become the first uneven bars skill to bear her name and the sixth “Biles” in the international code of points.

Chiles will shine in the final of the field

Coming in third in the Olympic all-around and not making the final is devastating (just ask Jordyn Wieber and Gabby Douglas). But the bright spots for Chiles will be Tuesday’s team final, where she’ll likely be first in all four rotations, and Monday’s floor final, where her Beyoncé-themed routine will be sensational and give her a legitimate shot at leaving Paris with some individual trophies of her own.



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