Even the greatest gymnast of all-time – the G-GOAT, if you will – isn’t perfect.
Four-time Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles registered a couple of stumbles and penalties in her initial performance Monday at Ariake Gymnastics Center in Tokyo, allowing the team representing the Russian Olympic Committee to grab a one-point lead in the women’s team competition entering Tuesday’s finals.
The 24-year-old Biles, the reigning all-around champion, still leads the overall standings. But she committed uncharacteristic errors during the vault and floor exercise qualifying rotations as the heavily favored U.S. squad failed to post the top cumulative score in qualifying for the first time since 2010 at either the World Championships or the Summer Games.
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“I feel we did a pretty good job. Obviously there are little things we need to work on, so we’ll go back and practice and work on that, just so we can do our best performance at team finals, because that’s what matters,” Biles told reporters
Led by 21-year-old Angelina Melnikova, the ROC accumulated a one-point advantage — 171.629 to 170.562 – over the U.S gymnasts, with China ranked third at 166.863.
Biles landed outside the floor boundaries on one tumbling pass during her floor routine, and she also stepped outside the lines on her first vault. She still ranks first in the all-around standings, with fellow American Sunisa Lee in second and Melnikova in third.
Elsewhere on the American team, Jordan Chiles made mistakes on the uneven bars and fell off the balance beam, Grace McCallum stepped out of bounds during her floor routine and Lee had two of her scores (vault/floor) dropped from the team competition.
“This was not the finals. This was getting into the finals,” U.S. high-performance director Tom Forster told reporters. “So this might be a great awakening for us and we’ll take advantage of it.”
Russian athletes officially are not representing their country following a doping scandal, with use of the country’s name, flag and anthem banned from the Summer Games.