Simone Biles leads Team USA gymnastics gold medal celebrations
After leading her team in competition, Simone Biles spearheaded the USA gymnastics side’s celebration after bagging gold medals at the Paris Olympics on Tuesday.
Following their convincing win over Brazil and Italy, Biles and her squad took to TikTok to show off their new piece of hardware.
Biles posted a video backstage with teammates Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles, and Hezly Rivera jokingly ‘biting’ their gold medals with a soundbite to match their actions.
‘TASTE GOLDEN,’ she captioned. She also wrote ‘us’ between a red heart emoji on one end and blue heart emoji on the other.
Aside from Biles, Lee also posted her video dubbed with an iconic Kanye West soundbite from his speech at the 47th Grammy Awards.
Simone Biles lead her team in celebrations after securing gold medals at the Paris Olympics
‘Everybody want to know what I would do if I didn’t win,’ Lee and Chiles lip synced in the opening clip before covering the camera and unveiling the team holding their medals.
‘I guess we’ll never know,’ they mouthed in unison before a beat dropped and the video concluded.
With all but one member of the team featured on the celebratory videos, fans took to the comment sections on both clips to ask about Jade Carey’s absence.
‘She went to the bathroom & then we haven’t seen her since,’ Biles responded to one user.
The self-described ‘Redemption Tour,’ the moniker given to a team filled with women who wanted to return to the Games for deeply personal reasons, ended with Biles and the Americans where they have almost always been since she burst onto the scene 11 years ago: on top of the podium, the rest of the world looking up.
Biles lead the United States to a gold medal finish over rivals Italy and Brazil on Tuesday
Fans wondered where Carey was for the post-win celebrations on social media
Simone Biles, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey, Sunisa Lee and Hezly Rivera celebrate after the win
Eight years after winning gold in Rio with a group that called Aly Raisman grandma because she was all of 22, Biles – now 27 and married – was back again with Carey (24), Chiles (23), Lee (21) and teenager Rivera at her side.
‘We don´t have to be put in the box anymore,’ Biles said.
With Biles at her show-stopping best, the Americans’ total of 171.296 was well clear of Italy and Brazil and the exclamation point of a yearlong run in which Biles has cemented her legacy as the greatest ever in her sport, and among the best in the history of the Olympics.
‘She’s the greatest of all greats,’ said Chiles, who now has gold to go with the team silver she, Lee and Biles earned in Tokyo, when Biles removed herself from the team final to protect herself.
Lee embraces teammate Carey following her routine on the balance beam
Chiles celebrates after competing in the uneven bars event
Suni Lee performs on the floor during the women’s artistic gymnastics team final
Chiles, who seemed like a longshot to make it this spring after injuries piled up, was pretty good in her own right. She began the night by drilling her double-twisting Yurchenko vault, sending the Americans on a four-apparatus stop on their ‘Tour’ that felt equal parts coronation and celebration.
And over two hours in front of a crowd that included everyone from tennis great Serena Williams and actor Natalie Portman, Biles left little doubt about anything.
Her status as the sport’s greatest of all time. Her ability to move past the ‘twisties’ that derailed her in Japan. Her spot in the pantheon of the U.S. Olympic movement.
She now has a staggering 38 medals in major international competitions. Eight of those have come under the Olympic rings, moving her past Shannon Miller for the most by an American gymnast.
Yet her return wasn’t so much about winning. That’s never really been the point anyway, just a byproduct of her unparalleled excellence. It was about a joy she had lost somewhere along the way.
Italy, which was a surprising second to the US during qualifying, returned to the podium for the first time since 1928 by holding off Brazil for silver.
