The final image of the 2024 Olympic women’s gymnastics competition captured an iconic moment: Simone Biles and her U.S. teammate Jordan Chiles—both of whom train at Biles’s World Champions Centre in Spring—kneeling on the silver and bronze steps on the medal podium, pointing toward Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade on the gold level with her arms raised and her smile stretched ear to ear. In the final event, floor exercise, the Brazilian gymnast managed to edge Biles for the title, winning the gold medal that had eluded her throughout these Olympics. This is the first time that Biles has ever lost the floor gold in world-championship or Olympic competition. But judging from the display of admiration on the medal podium, Biles didn’t seem too upset about it. “I have so much respect for her,” Biles told NBC after the medal ceremony. “She’s such a good competitor. She always keeps me on my toes.”
Andrade, who is 25, has been competing in the senior ranks for nearly as long as Biles but had torn her knee ligaments on three occasions from 2015 to 2019. While Biles was dominating the sport in those years, Andrade was rehabbing, rehabbing again, and then rehabbing some more. Her ability is second only to Biles’s, but Andrade never got to show it to the world. And it seemed like she’d never turn into the first true rival that close followers of gymnastics believed her to be.
In Tokyo, it looked like it might happen, but then came Biles’s attack of the twisties, and the defending Olympic champion had to withdraw from enough of the medal rounds that fans never got to see the two face off with hardware on the line.
Then Biles took a break from the sport for nearly two years, and it wasn’t certain that she’d ever return. In the meantime, Andrade took over the “best female gymnast” mantle by winning the all-around title by a Biles-like margin at the 2022 World Championships. It was thrilling to see Andrade excel, but it was also hard not to wonder if she’d be winning so much if Biles were there. For a long while, the two champion gymnasts felt like ships passing in the night.
But Biles returned and immediately resumed her winning ways. She was so dominant that fans assumed Andrade’s rise had as much to do with the American’s absence as it with the Brazilian’s excellence. Generally speaking, that was true. At the 2023 World Championships, Biles won her sixth all-around crown, with Andrade in second place, about a half a point behind. But in the vault finals at that competition, Biles overcooked her astounding Yurchenko double pike, rolling to her back, and Andrade was right there to take gold. Biles was still on top of the sport, but she could no longer absorb big errors and expect to come out on top—not with Andrade nipping at her heels.
In Paris, Andrade continued to push Biles, a reality that the Texas gymnast acknowledged in both her statements and her selection of skills to perform. In the all-around final, she went with her eponymous Yurchenko double pike vault, giving her a difficulty edge of nearly one full point over the Brazilian at the start of that apparatus. Biles’s other option for the vault was a maneuver known as the Cheng, but Andrade does it better (something I didn’t think possible when I characterized Biles’s Cheng as the apotheosis of the skill in 2020). Biles’s decision to perform her super difficult vault in an all-around competition—rather than holding it for the vault finals—is a testament to the respect she has for Andrade’s abilities.
In the all-around, Biles’s lead of more than half a point over Andrade after the vault completely evaporated when Biles faltered on bars and Andrade drillied her routine, with the Texan dropping to third place. The margin between the two was razor-thin by the time they reached the final event, floor, where Biles was able to pull ahead and win the all-around gold.
“Thank God we did the [Yurchenko] double pike today,” she said of the need to grab every difficulty point she could to hold off Andrade. “I wasn’t planning on it, but I just knew how phenomenal of an athlete she is, and on each event we’re very similar in scores, so I was like, ‘Okay, I think I have to bring out the big guns.’ ”
Suni Lee, Team USA’s all-around gold medalist at the Tokyo Olympics, said she’d never seen Biles so stressed. “I don’t want to compete with Rebeca no more,” Biles said, laughing, after the all-around competition. “I’m tired. She’s way too close. I’ve never had an athlete that close. . .”
During the vault apparatus final, Andrade’s skill and superb execution forced Biles to execute her eponymous vault extremely well. Biles sometimes overrotates the Yurchenko double pike, which is safer but can result in major landing deductions. Against Andrade, she couldn’t simply rely on putting it to her feet—she had to execute.
And in the floor exercise final, Biles needed to execute again after Andrade landed all her tumbling passes with minimal deductions. Biles practically stuck her triple twisting double somersault, the astounding tumbling skill she introduced in 2019. In the warmup to floor exercise, she had landed poorly and fallen backward on the skill, and appeared to be in pain or at least discomfort. Something similar happened days earlier, during warmups for the women’s team-qualification round, when Biles landed awkwardly on her other eponymous skill, the double layout half. She could be heard speaking about pain in her calf and then exiting the arena with the USA Gymnastics medical staff. When Biles returned, her left calf was wrapped—a therapeutic remedy that would remain throughout the rest of the events in Paris.
It wasn’t just Andrade who was creeping up on her; so, too, were her age and all of her years in the sport. Biles has enjoyed remarkably good physical health for an elite gymnast, and that has probably played a role in her unusual longevity, but she is still made of human parts despite the supernatural qualities that are often ascribed to her. Her wrapped calf at the Olympics and her frequently swaddled ankles in recent years are reminders of the impact of her many years of training and competition.
In the floor final, Biles followed Andrade, who had stuck or nearly stuck all of her tumbling passes. The event was still Biles’s to win, thanks to the advantage her difficulty scores give her against the field. After almost sticking her first pass, she went out of bounds with both feet on two of the subsequent passes, and the resulting deductions completely erased her starting advantage. After she completed the routine, Biles could be heard saying, “I think Rebeca’s got this one.”
She was right. When her score flashed, she trailed Andrade by less than one-tenth of a point. Chiles rounded out the floor medalist trio by placing third after the inquiry her coaches submitted was decided in her favor. Together the three comprised the first all-Black podium in Olympic gymnastics history. “We were kind of all cherishing that together because we knew how special it would be,” Biles said. “We knew the impact that it would make on all the little girls around the world that are trying to do what we’re doing, just for them to know that it’s possible.”
Biles leaves Paris with four medals—three gold plus one silver—and a couple of new records. The team gold she won last week allowed her to surpass Shannon Miller’s record of seven Olympic medals, making Biles the most decorated Olympic gymnast in U.S. history. She also became the first female gymnast to repeat as Olympic all-around champion since Vera Caslavska did it in 1968. (Although Biles’s titles, unlike Caslavska’s, were nonconsecutive.) Finally, Biles tied Caslavska’s Olympic medal tally, which is second in women’s gymnastics behind the former USSR’s Larissa Latynina.
Andrade also augmented her legacy and became a GOAT in Brazilian sports. The four medals that Andrade added to her résumé in Paris have made her the most decorated Brazilian athlete in Olympic history.
I’ve written before that Biles could have kept her Rio program and continued winning, and that was true—until Andrade returned and stayed healthy for more than a season. But 2016 Biles wouldn’t have cut it against 2024 Andrade. Biles needed every bit of her difficulty advantages to stay ahead of the Brazilian. Over the years we’ve seen Biles excel. We’ve seen her dominate. But we’ve rarely seen her get pushed before Andrade challenged her at these Olympics, and Biles is better for it. And so is gymnastics, because every sport needs a great rivalry.
Andrade has already announced that she will no longer compete in the all-around, cutting floor from her repertoire, to preserve her body and health. And while Biles hasn’t ruled out the 2028 Los Angeles Games, her future in the sport is uncertain. This friendly rivalry may not continue.
But even if Paris winds up being the last true showdown of Biles and Andrade for fans to witness, the gymnastics world is fortunate that against all ACL-recovery odds, it finally happened.
