Simone Biles and Team U.S.A. must move past a mistake-laden qualifying round to edge out the surprising Russian team for gold.
The United States has reigned over women’s gymnastics for more than a decade, with the last team defeat handed to it by Russia in 2010, by only two-tenths of a point. Since then — and particularly with Simone Biles’s emergence on the world scene in 2013 — the American team has seemed unstoppable.
But Biles and her teammates are human, and humans are not perfect. On Sunday, the Russian team toppled predictions by qualifying for the Olympic team final in first place. The U.S. squad finished second, behind by more than a point, making for a potentially thrilling showdown in Tuesday’s final.
The American team was far from its best early and was perhaps scored more critically, and fairly, than it had been at home during the pandemic. In international meets, judges tend to take more significant point deductions for execution mistakes — not hitting a perfect leap, or not pointing toes, or landing a tumbling pass with a low chest position — offsetting high marks for difficulty.
Those kinds of mistakes, and more obvious ones, hurt the American squad in the qualification. The slate is wiped clean for the team final, where every mark counts.
How to watch in the United States
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LIVE: The competition begins Tuesday at 6:45 a.m. Eastern time and can be streamed live via the NBC Olympics site, Peacock or the NBC Sports app. To watch international broadcasts, use a VPN.
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TAPE DELAY: Many fans will prefer to stream a replay or watch the tape-delayed broadcast, which will air on NBC at 8 p.m. Eastern time. To avoid spoilers, turn off mobile news notifications and try to stay off social media.
How the competition works
Eight countries will present three gymnasts on each apparatus — vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise — and all marks will count toward each team’s total score. The American and Russian teams will both start on the vault. (With their country technically banned from the Games because of a state-sponsored doping program, Russian athletes are competing under the banner of the Russian Olympic Committee or R.O.C.)
Each routine will receive a “D score” for difficulty (such as a 5.4 for the common double-twisting Yurchenko vault) and an “E score” for execution (starting at 10 and decreasing for errors). The two scores are combined, so that the double-twisting Yurchenko could merit a maximum possible score of 15.4. For a more in-depth explanation, watch this helpful video on YouTube:
Team U.S.A.
Biles, Sunisa Lee, Jordan Chiles and Grace McCallum make up the U.S. team. Biles and McCallum will compete on every apparatus. Chiles will do the vault and the floor exercise, and Lee will take on the uneven bars and the beam.
This week, Tom Forster, the high-performance coordinator who oversees the U.S. team, appeared to select the top three Americans in the qualifying round to compete on each event in the final. It is an approach he has used in the past, but one that many in the gymnastics community have criticized as unstrategic, since it can exclude gymnasts with higher scoring potential.
To take home gold, the American team must execute cleanly. Biles could perform a Yurchenko double pike, the hardest vault in women’s gymnastics, but will pay special attention to better controlling all of her landings to increase her execution marks.
The United States is betting on Chiles, who fell in the qualification, to return to her usual rock-solid form. On the bars, Lee will aim to link her most demanding skills so that her routine, the hardest in the world, earns its maximum difficulty score. McCallum is key on the vault and will look to boost her beam and floor scores.
Jade Carey and MyKayla Skinner will be absent, as they are non-team competitors. Carey will return for the vault and floor finals next week. Skinner, however, will be the first U.S. gymnast in 33 years not to win an Olympic medal, despite outscoring some Americans in the qualification. She is also missing out on individual finals because of the two-per-country rule, but she qualified third on the vault and 11th in the all-around.
The Field
China and Russia were initially projected to vie for the silver medal. That outlook has changed.
Expect the Russian team, led by the Olympic veteran Angelina Melnikova, to wow on the uneven bars. The team’s biggest liability, however, is the beam. The Russians earned the top score there on Sunday, but face pressure to repeat that showing if they want any scoring cushion. Also, Russia benefited most from the delay in the Olympic year: Viktoria Listunova, 16, would have been too young to compete had the Games been held in 2020.
Russia qualified ahead of China by nearly five points. The Chinese team will need to put up high marks on the beam, its signature event, but even perfection there won’t make up for any weakness on the vault and in the floor exercise. Tang Xijing, who placed second to Biles in the all-around at the most recent world championships, is crucial to the team’s hopes: She is the only Chinese gymnast competing in each event in the final.
France had a great first outing, qualifying fourth. By contrast, Japan qualified eighth. Mélanie de Jesus dos Santos, the top French gymnast, and Mai Murakami, Japan’s multiple world medalist, will need to have extraordinary meets — and need the top teams to have some falls — for their countries to medal.
Britain and Italy will probably have a hard time contending for the podium. Britain had a tough qualification after leaving the veteran Becky Downie at home, despite her big scoring potential on the bars. Italy’s top gymnast, Giorgia Villa, is absent because of an ankle injury.
The Belgian team qualified in fifth place, ensuring its best finish in the team event since 1948, when it placed 11th. The Belgians are best known for their quirky choreography on floor, and for Nina Derwael, the world champion who qualified ahead of Lee on the bars.
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