If you’ve been lucky enough to catch the Paris Olympics live streams, you’ve had a fun week. The women’s gymnastics all-around competition kicked off around lunchtime on Thursday, and as expected, Spring’s own Simone Biles walked away with the gold. In doing so, she became the most decorated American gymnast in Olympics history and the first two-time all-around winner since 1968. (Biles won gold at the 2016 Rio Olympics, though she bowed out of the competition in Tokyo in 2021.)
It was a can’t-miss event, as evidenced by the number of celebrities in attendance at Paris’s Bercy Arena that day. NBC couldn’t keep the cameras off them, constantly panning to reactions from the likes of Steph Curry and Seth Rogen.
As I watched, I wondered, as I often do, where Beyoncé was at that moment. I didn’t think she’d miss seeing Biles make history. Bey’s already established herself as an Olympics superfan, practically part of the team, having (perhaps awkwardly) introduced USA’s athletes with a pretape for the opening ceremony. The queen would surely be as invested in Biles’s historic win as the rest of us are. Maybe even more so: they both come from the Houston area and, well, Simone Biles is really the Beyoncé of gymnasts, and Beyoncé is the Simone Biles of pop stars.
Soon enough, our Houston queen put her stamp on the moment, narrating a heartfelt Biles tribute that popped up on NBC Sports’s YouTube page late Thursday afternoon. Ostensibly an ad for the network’s 7 p.m. central time replay of the day’s competition, it was also something sweeter, as if Beyoncé weren’t just celebrating Biles success but officially welcoming her into the pantheon of American legends.
“Let’s talk about power,” declared the queen in her honeyed Houston drawl, a subject Knowles-Carter is well able to educate us on. “Because really, that’s what this story’s about,” she adds, making reference to the strength and speed that propel Biles to unimaginable heights. But Beyoncé isn’t just talking about physical power. She sees something greater: lasting power. “Only a select few know what it feels like to get to the top and stay there,” says the woman with more Grammys than anyone else. She would know.
