Simone Biles missed out on her fourth medal of Paris 2024 – and her 11th Olympic medal overall – in the balance beam on Monday after she fell during her routine. The American, who had already won golds at these Games in the team, individual all-around and vault – finished in fifth place.
Meanwhile, Italy’s Alice D’Amato didn’t win the final so much as survive it. But a routine that avoided major errors turned out to be enough for the 21-year-old from Brescia to win an improbable Olympic title, her country’s first ever gold medal in artistic gymnastics, sharing the podium with teammate Manila Esposito, who earned bronze.
Biles finished fifth with an identical score to her US teammate, Suni Lee, while Chinese teenager Zhou Yaqin took silver.
“We were both just kind of annoyed just because we know what we’re capable of,” Lee said. “We weren’t able to get it done today, but she still has floor and she’s the Goat, so she’ll be amazing.”
On the final day of a meet that began seven days ago with Italy capturing their first medal in artistic gymnastics in 96 years, Brescia and Esposito managed to hold their nerve while one heralded rival after another made costly mistakes in a beam final whose footage won’t be sent to the Olympic Museum in Lausanne for posterity.
The beam, which dares gymnasts to perform routines of extraordinary rigour on a platform 4ft above the ground and not much wider than a credit card, is the sport’s most precarious apparatus. On Monday in what can only be described as one of those days, at least half of the eight finalists fell victim to the discipline’s essential unpredictability.
Competing first in the running order of eight was Zhou, the 18-year-old Olympic debutante who took silver on beam behind Biles at last year’s worlds, who was on her way to a flawless routine before a balance check that forced her to bend over and grab the beam, drawing audible gasps from the crowd and a significant deduction from the judges. Her score of 14.100 was a disappointment after qualifying highest with 14.866.
Next was Lee, who put together a solid set until slipping on the last skill of her aerial series and splitting the beam in what appeared to be a very painful fall. She was consoled by longtime coach Jess Graba after completing her set for a score of 13.100, ending her Paris Games with a team gold and two bronzes, including one in the all-around, no minor haul for a gymnast who overcame a pair of career-threatening kidney ailments just to reach the starting line.
The door was suddenly open for Biles, a red-hot favorite in the floor exercise final to come, to become the third Olympic beam champion from the United States after Shannon Miller and Shawn Johnson and even to match her five-gold performance from the 2019 world championships.
But first D’Amato took to the apparatus and breezed through a mistake-free routine for a score of 13.466, which moved her into gold position and guaranteed her a medal, prompting roars of applause from the crowd.
The clouds had parted for Biles to win an eighth Olympic gold and first ever on the beam, but the 27-year-old walked backward and off the beam after a back handspring-layout stepout-layout stepout, a sequence she’s rarely erred on historically. Biles climbed back on and stuck her dismount then, after an interminable wait, she was given a score of 14.100, the same as Lee and out of the medals.
Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade appeared to save the best for last, putting down a clean routine, save for a missed front aerial-split ring jump. But the roars after her flawless dismount from an audience sure they’d just seen the winning performance turned to confusion and light jeering after the judges handed down a score of 13.933. The Brazilian was off the podium.
Biles, who has already claimed three gold medals at these Paris Olympics in the team event, the all-around and the vault, will be hotly tipped for a fourth when the floor exercise takes place later Monday.
Earlier, China’s Zou Jingyuan won the gold in the men’s gymnastics parallel bars event, becoming the first man in 32 years to win medals on rings and bars at the same Olympics. Ukraine’s Illia Kovtun won the silver medal and Japan’s Shinnosuke Oka took the bronze.
