In the aftermath of her nightmare second Olympic experience, all Simone Biles wanted to do was go home. But even after she departed Tokyo, Biles had to follow her teammates to New York and wade through numerous excruciating talk show appearances and photo ops. Then came a parade in her home town of Houston. Each time the cameras trained on her, she plastered a fake smile over her face. When she finally returned home, she wept.
It has taken so much work for Biles to return to the top of her sport after the events of Tokyo 2020. She stepped away from gymnastics for a year, she has spent many hours of therapy trying to fully understand the root causes of her mental suffering and she has had to reframe her relationship with her sport. Now, she says, she is performing for herself.
Last October, Biles opened a new chapter in her career with an incredible comeback performance, winning four gold medals and one silver at the world championships. She did not ease her way back in; from the very beginning, even though regaining full confidence in her gymnastics after her twisties struggles was an ongoing process, the 27-year-old performed enormous gymnastics.
With another extra year of training behind her and a renewed confidence after Antwerp, Biles is even better. The US team will be heavy favourites for the team final and Biles begins the competition as favourite to win the all-around, vault and floor exercise competitions. She can certainly also win the balance beam title, as she did at the world championships last year, but there is little to choose between Biles, her teammate Sunisa Lee and the Chinese gymnasts Qiu Qiyuan and Zhou Yaqin.
Biles may be the best gymnast in the world, but as Tokyo underscored, nothing in this sport is certain. That was also made clear last year as, despite Biles’ wins, she was pushed like she has never been before by Rebeca Andrade, a 25-year-old from Brazil who has followed up her breakout performances in Tokyo by establishing herself as an all-time great in her own right. As the all-around gold medallist in the 2022 world championships that Biles missed, Andrade is clearly the second-best gymnast in the world right now.
Instead of merely maintaining her already stellar routines and her position as No 2, Andrade made it clear on Thursday that she has come to fight for everything. Eight hours after Biles and Team USA had finished their own subdivision, Andrade performed incredibly difficult upgraded skills across all four of the apparatuses.
Her lofty ambitions were particularly underlined by the revelation that Andrade had submitted the triple twisting Yurchenko vault, another startlingly difficult vault that has never been successfully performed by a female gymnast, as a potential new element. Although Andrade did not perform it in podium training – she did perform a stellar Yurchenko vault with 2.5 twists – it could be an attempt to counter Biles’ Yurchenko Double Pike. While Biles remains the clear favourite in the all-around, vault and floor competitions, it seems clear that Andrade will be right there if she does not perform well.
Beyond the great battles between Biles and Andrade to come, the men’s all-around final is likely to be a tussle between the Japanese defending champion Daiki Hashimoto and China’s Zhang Boheng. At 22 and 24 both have performed at startling levels in the all-around over the past two years and they seem to be in the process of building an era-defining rivalry.
Britain’s Max Whitlock returns for his fourth Olympic Games in search of even more history at 31. Having already won three Olympic gold medals in total, Whitlock is seeking a third consecutive title on pommel horse. He will face significant pressure from Rhys McClenaghan, the prodigious Ireland gymnast who has now won the last two world championships on the apparatus.
Less than a year after becoming the vault world champion, Jake Jarman will be one of the gold medal favourites on vault and he is also capable of battling for medals on the floor exercise. The British men’s team of Whitlock, Jarman, Joe Fraser, Harry Hepworth and Luke Whitehouse has also been lifted by the return of Fraser after injury. They will likely be tussling with the United States for a medal while Japan and China are currently favourites to battle out for gold.
The buildup to the Olympics, however, has been brutal for the British women’s team, with Jessica Gadirova, Ondine Achampong and Jennifer Gadirova all ruled out due to injuries having contributed to Olympic and world team medals over the past three years. It is a reflection of the team’s depth that Becky Downie, Alice Kinsella, Ruby Evans, Georgia-Mae Fenton and Abigail Martin can be competitive if they perform well. Still, there will be no room for error.
