Simone Biles leads the U.S. in Olympic qualifiers despite discomfort in her left leg. (0:46)
PARIS — Not now. Not again.
For an unsettling several minutes during women’s team qualifying on Sunday, it looked as if Simone Biles was hurt and might not continue the competition. She’d started the meet with a spectacular performance anchoring the first rotation on beam, but cut her warmup short on floor, saying she “felt something” in her left leg after landing one of her eponymous tumbling passes. Three years after a mental injury sidelined Biles in Tokyo, she again left the arena briefly with a USA Gymnastics team doctor and talked with her coaches. But this time, she returned to the floor with her left ankle and calf heavily taped and continued the meet.
“I’m not down on the floor. I don’t know what’s happening,” 2008 Olympian and team strategic lead Chellsie Memmel said after the meet and before she had a chance to speak with Biles. “It was hard to see it happen, and on the world’s biggest stage. I can’t even imagine how she was feeling. But I trust Simone, trust her medical team and trusted 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 hadn’t bothered her again until her floor warmup Sunday. Her diagnosis is unclear, but it was obvious to anyone in the arena or watching from home that she was experiencing discomfort, although Landi said Biles never considered withdrawing from the meet.
And despite the pain, she still did Simone Biles things — like anchor the floor lineup, perform the most difficult routine in the world and earn the highest score of the day on the event.
WOW. There are no words for Simone Biles. #ParisOlympics: NBC, E! and Peacock pic.twitter.com/sOWzVez7dL
Then, despite limping during vault warmup — and at one point crawling (while laughing and joking with her teammates) — she landed the hardest vault in the world, the Biles II, and earned a massive 15.8 and the highest score of the competition. (Her two-vault score was a 15.3 and also topped qualifying.)
The POWER in Simone Biles’ vault. #ParisOlympics on NBC and Peacock pic.twitter.com/rBoKiBfEul
Landi said Biles’ leg began to feel better by the team’s final rotation on uneven bars, where the 2016 Olympic all-around champion earned the ninth-highest score of the day and missed the bars final by one spot. She topped all-around qualifying with a 59.556 and qualified into three of four event finals.
“She’s incredible,” Memmel said. “She is an outstanding gymnast and person and what she was able to do, while dealing with soreness — or something — in her lower leg, was remarkable. She competed like she trains. She did her job. Am I surprised? No.”
Biles next leads Team USA into Tuesday’s team final, and then it’s on to the all-around and individual event finals. Here’s what to know before the competition for medals begins.
Sunday’s performances were far from flawless. There were nerves on beam and far too many mistakes on floor. But every team made mistakes, and the qualification meet is the time to make them. There was a lot of good to take from Sunday’s performances, too. Scratch that: a lot of great.
The U.S. had three of the top four all-around performers, but because of the two-per-country rule, only Biles and reigning Olympic all-around champion Suni Lee will compete in Thursday’s all-around final. Lee edged teammate Jordan Chiles by less than one-tenth of a point in the overall standings.
Jordan Chiles is THAT girl. #ParisOlympics on NBC and Peacock pic.twitter.com/hm9dhxUORz
That means Team USA will walk into Bercy on Tuesday with a lot of confidence. And consider this: Despite not having a perfect meet, the U.S. still 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 chances are they will make fewer of them. “There’s obviously some things we need to work on,” Memmel said, “but we’re in a good place.”
On Tuesday, Biles and Chiles are slated to compete on all four events; Lee on bars, beam and floor; and Carey on vault.
Carey’s dad (and coach), Brian, has a philosophy for how he approaches his daughter’s training schedule that over the past year has taken on even greater meaning in her life. “He says, ‘The plan is in pencil,'” Carey told ESPN earlier this month. “He knows if there’s a plan written down and I don’t achieve it, I’m going to be very hard on myself. So, he reminds me that if I don’t feel good that day, we can erase it and do something else.” In other words: Don’t be too tied to expectations, and be willing to change plans on the fly.
It’s likely Brian reminded his daughter of that strategy Sunday when her meet wasn’t going as planned and she needed to erase what happened during her floor performance and reset her mind for vault.
Jade Carey’s mom had the sweetest reaction to her vault. ️ #ParisOlympics: NBC, E! & Peacock pic.twitter.com/z9emjE4Tel
Carey didn’t compete in the team’s opening rotation on beam, so her day started on floor, where she hoped to earn a spot in the final and defend her gold from Tokyo. But her performance was off 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 Brazil’s Rebecca Andrade, the 2021 Olympic all-around silver medalist, and earned a spot in Saturday’s vault final. After the meet, Carey revealed to Olympics.com that she’s been ill and unable to eat for the past few days, which likely contributed to her performance on floor, and could be why she is 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 a medal favorite then, too, but tripped on the runway attempting a Cheng during the final and landed outside of medal contention. “Redemption for me is making the vault final and proving that I belong there,” Carey told ESPN in mid-July. “And walking away with a medal this time.”
She’s halfway there. And while gold may be out of reach if Biles and Andrade land their vaults well, it’s time for Carey to pencil in that second part of her redemption plan.
That’s not exactly true, especially if Andrade, who finished second behind Biles in qualifying, has anything to say about it. But for U.S. fans, it might feel like it. A little over a year ago, this scenario seemed unlikely, if not impossible. Biles had yet to announce she was returning to competition, and Lee had just been diagnosed with two kidney diseases that made it difficult for her to get out of bed, let alone train, some days.
Suni Lee finishes her #ParisOlympics debut with a stellar uneven bar routine. : NBC, E!, and Peacock pic.twitter.com/tJP4pA0JJ3
And yet, here they are, two of the top three qualifiers into the all-around, and the first Olympic all-around champions to compete against one another in the same Olympic all-around final. “I’m just 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 didn’t think I would ever get to this point,” Lee said after making the team last month.
Even more remarkable: Biles, Andrade and Lee were the top three qualifiers into the all-around final, in the same order, in Tokyo, too.
The Tokyo bronze medalist on uneven bars, Lee is a medal favorite on the apparatus once again. But her focus, she’s said, is earning her first Olympic medal on beam. “I need a beam gold,” she said after trials. That will be no easy task.
Reigning Olympic all-around gold medalist Suni Lee is off to a solid start in her #ParisOlympics debut. : NBC, E! and Peacock pic.twitter.com/yS71jL2fzo
The 2022 NCAA beam champion struggled with her layout step-out mount in training this week and opted to return to her straddle split mount during Sunday’s qualification meet. She also has Biles and top beam qualifier Yaqin Zhou of China to contend with in next Monday’s final.
But just by making this team and being in Paris, Lee has achieved more than she believed to be possible not long ago. Why stop now?
Biles hasn’t lost an all-around competition in 11 years, and if her calf injury is as innocuous as it was portrayed after Sunday’s meet, she is the likely all-around champion, the gold-medal favorite on floor and vault and a medal favorite on beam.
WHAT. A. PERFORMANCE.Simone Biles ends her night with a stunning uneven bars routine. #ParisOlympics pic.twitter.com/bMSoCiUtEF
Because she didn’t make the uneven bars final, Biles might choose to attempt her new skill, a Weiler one-and-a-half, during team or all-around final. If she completes it successfully, it will become the first skill on uneven bars to bear her name and the sixth “Biles” in the international code of points.
Finishing third in all-around qualifying at the Olympics 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 is likely to lead off on all four rotations, and Monday’s floor final, where her Beyonce-themed routine will be a showstopper and gives her a legitimate shot to leave Paris with some individual hardware of her own.