Celebs React to EPIC USA Women"s Gymnastics Team Gold Medal at Rio Olympics 2016
Theres really only one way to describe Simone Biless performance in the womens all-around finaldominant. There could be other words to use, but theyd all mean the same thing. It was a performance that exceeded expectations when expectation might have never been higher for a gymnast. To match them, Biles wasnt supposed to just win, that wouldnt have been impressive enough. She needed to blow the rest of the competition away and thats exactly what she did.
Biles went into the third rotation down 0.034, behind Russias Aliya Mustafina. She left the rotation up 1.533 with her best event, floor, remaining. By the time Biles took to the floor for her last routine, she needed just a 13.833 to win. It wasnt the 7+ routine she needed to put up to win the team final, but Biles would be able to hit a 13.8 on floor with a fall, maybe two. She went out and put up a 15.933, the highest single score of the competition and the highest on floor by half a point.
In the end, the margin of victory was 2.1, the greatest win Biles has put up in international competition on the grandest of stages. Previously, Biless biggest win was by 1.083 points at the 2015 World Championships. The competition around Biles has been getting better too, but shes been improving at a greater rate.
Over the past four major international competitions, the runner-ups score was gotten higher in all but one and the average score of all participants has increased in each meet.
But Biles never let herself fall back to the pack, she just keeps improving. She doesnt just continue to win, she pulls herself in front of the competition to lengths never seen before. Her win on Thursday was the most dominant in international gymnastics in the open scoring era (since 2006). To bring back the Z-Scores, which accounts for performance against the entire field, not just the runner up and something introduced here comparing Biles to the best male gymnast Kohei Uchimura, Biless Olympic all-around win had a Z-Score of 2.805, the highest of the 22 individual all-around results from the past eight World Championships and three Olympics.
Theres been so many superlatives thrown at Biles over the past week and its possible none of them are exaggerated. Shes made her case as the best female gymnast ever and shes building quite the resume to put against Kohei Uchimura for the greatest of all-time.
Whats scary about Bilesat least scary for any women with dreams of winning any meet while Biles competingis how much better she can still become. Womens gymnastics is not a sport of longevity. The fact Biles has been firmly on top of the sport for four years is already amazing, but theres even more in the tank.
Biless first pass on floor is a double layout with a full twist. If she wanted, she could add a whole extra twist to the skillshe already does that in a tucked position for her third tumbling pass. On vault, she has the ability to add another half twist to her 2.5-twisting yurchenko. Only one woman is close to competing that, North Koreas Hong Un-Jong who might attempt it for the first time during vault finals on Sunday. On beam, Biles already does the hardest dismount in the world, a full-twisting double back. Shes trained putting another twist on that one too.
Its yet to be known what Biles will do after Rioand she still has three individual event finals before that happensbut it would not be surprising to see her take some time off. But if she decides to continue competing, she wont be trying to make a comeback like some other Olympic champions before her. Theres a good chance Biles can keep getting better.
Biles, though, wasnt the only American gymnast fulfilling an Olympic dream on Thursday. Aly Raisman entered the day with three Olympic medals, all three of them gold, but it was a bronze that escaped her which led to her comeback bid for Rio.
Raisman was the second all-around qualifier for the U.S. in London and she did quite well, well enough to finish tied for third. However, there was a tiebreaker rule that did not allow for duplicate medals to be handed out and Raisman lost the tiebreaker to Aliya Mustafina. Raisman left that competition with nothing, and even though she would win a gold medal on floor a few days later, losing out on an all-around medal is what drove her back to competition.
In qualifying, Raisman finished second behind Biles. Before that round there were even questions about whether Raisman would get the chance to do all around, but she was given the fourth and final spot on bars over Laurie Hernandez, which gave her the opportunity to compete for another chance at an all-around medal.
Its one thing to return to a second Olympics in womens gymnastics, but its another to get better like Raisman did. She, like Biles, got to end the competition on floor and also like Biles needed a score she could easily reach to be position for a silver medal. She didnt have to be perfect, but she was close and the second her floor routine ended, she knew she had accomplished the one thing she had left to do in the Olympics. Raisman finished 1.433 ahead of Mustafina for second, almost as dominating of a victory as Biles in first.
The competition is not over for these two athletes. Theyll get a few days off, but then its back to the floor for event finals. Raisman will defend her her Olympic title on floor during competition on Tuesday. Biles will compete vault on Sunday, beam on Monday and will try to dethrone Raisman on floor Tuesday. Shell be favored to win gold on all three of those events, but as shes proven already, theres no problem in exceeding even the highest expectations.
Source: http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&ct2=us&usg=AFQjCNF2sD7D5rOJPNjUvz4Df5P-iXBFHA&clid=c3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331&cid=52779177676237&ei=Mv2tV9D3B8ON3gGJ0Y7oBg&url=https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/08/olympics-recap-womens-gymnastics-all-around-finals.html
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