“We had the most fun I’ve ever had at a meet,” Suni Lee said after they won gold. “It’s super special because we all knew how much we wanted it, we put in the work and did everything that we needed to do.”
Biles shared the team’s pre-competition ritual, which involved “bumping music, loud.”
“We were just having a good time while we were getting ready,” Biles said. “And we all knew what the job was once we got in here.”
The U.S. kicked off their night on the vault, where they built strong momentum heading into the uneven bars. Lee anchored their bars lineup with a gutsy routine that expertly juggled risk and reward, earning a 14.566.
A fall off the beam from Jordan Chiles sent a jolt of nerves through the U.S. team in the third rotation, but Lee got them back on track with a confident exercise. Biles narrowly averted disaster on a side aerial, the easiest skill in her beam routine, but managed to stay on.
Team USA has several points of difficulty advantage, so Chiles’ missed routine had little impact on their gold medal chances. She more than redeemed herself on floor, where she served up high-flying acrobatics and magnetic stage presence in equal measure, tumbling to Beyoncé.
Reigning Olympic floor champion Jade Carey performed just one routine, a Cheng on vault that earned a 14.800. She sat out floor in the final after a disastrous qualifying routine, when she appeared to get lost in the air on her double tuck, doing only a full tuck and rolling backward, out of bounds.
