Simone Biles, Jordan Chiles and Sunisa Lee spent the night before perhaps the biggest gymnastics meet of their lives restless.
Simone Biles, Jordan Chiles and Sunisa Lee spent the night before perhaps the biggest gymnastics meet of their lives restless. There was a tension in the air. They’d all been in the Olympic spotlight before, experiences that left them with medals but also the kind of scars be they physical, psychological or both that heal but never really go away. Click here to connect with us on WhatsApp And here they were in Paris, the leaders of a star-laden U.S. team everyone expected to finish atop the medal stand, and something wasn’t right. In a different time, in a different era, it might have festered. Might have followed them onto the floor at Bercy Arena and into the history books, too.
This is not a different time. This is not a different era. This is now.
So the oldest team the U.S. has ever sent to the Olympics, including a trio that has spent their respective careers breaking barriers about what a female gymnast can and can’t do, what they can and can’t be, did something they never used to do.
They talked, with Biles three years removed from a Tokyo Games that dragged the conversation around mental health and sports kicking and screaming into the light right in the middle of it.
I think there was a little bit of struggle, she said. So it was really needed.
By the time they walked onto the floor for the Olympic final, the tension was gone, largely replaced with joy.
And not soon after, gold.
The self-described Redemption Tour”, the moniker given to a team filled with women who wanted to return to the Games for deeply personal reasons, ended with Biles and the Americans where they have almost always been since she burst onto the scene 11 years ago: on top of the podium, the rest of the world looking up.
