Simone Biles’ final performance in the 2024 Olympics has come to an end.
It may not have been in the way she’d hoped, but it was still impressive — and harkened back to the way she started the Games in Paris.
Biles landed a silver medal, just behind her biggest competitor Rebeca Andrade of Brazil. Fellow Team USA teammate Jordan Chiles took home the bronze following a shocking turn of events that saw her go from fifth to third.
Chiles — the last competitor of the day — initially received a 13.666 from judges. After some delay, her total was boosted by 0.1 when she filed an inquiry about her difficulty score, pushing Chiles past Romanians Ana Barbosu and Sabrina Maneca-Voinea and into third.
Biles was seen limping on the sidelines just before her performance after once again appearing to experience calf pain following a landing during her warmup for the event.
The women’s floor final was a close one. Biles ended at 14.133 while Andrade finished at 14.166.
Her tumbling passes weren’t perfect — she stepped out of bounds twice — but her difficulty is usually so far above everyone else that it hardly matters.
Not this time. She received a 7.833 execution score that included 0.6 in deductions for stepping out of bounds, allowing Andrade to win her second Olympic gold.
The floor performance marked a bright spot after a painful morning of beam performances for several gymnasts Monday.
Both Biles and Lee did not medal in the event, which saw numerous falls from several gymnasts in the competition, leaving even announcers questioning what happened as a series of errors made for surprising scores for some of the most prominent names in the final.
It was the first podium finish without an American in women’s gymnastics so far in Paris.
Team USA gymnastics Simone Biles and Suni Lee both fell off the balance beam during women’s gymnastics finals, pushing them out of contention for medals in the event.
Still, the 27-year-old Biles, considered the greatest in the history of the sport, boosted her medal haul in Paris to four, gold in the team, all-around and vault finals and a silver that came as a surprise in her signature event.
Biles’ 2024 Olympic run was nothing short of incredible.
Wearing a red-white-and-blue leotard featuring thousands of crystals, Biles ended nine days of competition in Paris by silencing the critics once and for all who have long derided her for pulling out of multiple events at the Tokyo Games three years ago.
She won four medals in all, just one less than she did eight years ago in Rio de Janeiro.
Biles’ medal total (including seven gold, two silver, two bronze) ties Czechoslovakia’s Vera Caslavska for the second-most by a female gymnast in Olympic history. She missed a chance to add a fifth Paris medal earlier Monday when she fell during the beam final, finishing fifth.
