It is women’s artistic gymnastics team all-around finals night here in Paris, and the City of Light’s spirits are sky-high (though maybe not quite as high as one of Simone Biles’s tumbling leaps).
This marquee contest—traditionally one of the Games’ most anticipated—sees three athletes from each qualifying nation compete across women’s gymnastics’ four events: vault, uneven bars, balance beam, and the floor exercise. All three scores count. All are tallied up. The most points win. It’s high-stakes stuff, and, with each and every score counted, there’s little margin for error.
Team USA has good reason to feel confident, though, going into it. They looked incredibly solid in the qualifiers, finishing at the top of the leaderboard with a total of 172.296 points (followed by Italy, then China, then Brazil, all of which could pose a challenge if they have an especially strong night).
Biles is the squad’s captain, and her co-competitors include Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles, and Jade Carey. Interestingly, both Biles and Lee have gold medals in the individual all-around, too (the former from Rio de Janeiro, the latter from Tokyo). This marks the first time in Olympic history that a women’s team includes two such victors.
Take note of their leotards tonight, too: Made in Pennsylvania over two years, from start to finish, these outfits—at roughly $3,000 per piece—are given to each contestant in sets of eight. They feature more than 47,000 crystals per set.
The biggest news of the evening, though, is that tonight is the American women’s big chance to reclaim gold, having narrowly missed the top spot in Tokyo. Before that, they had won gold in the team all-around in both 2012 (London) and 2016 (Rio).
Stay tuned here for live updates from us here in Paris’s Bercy Arena.
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