Simone Biles is already in the history books, but the entire Team USA women’s’ gymnastics team for the Paris Summer Olympic Games also boasts a number of firsts.
The team of Biles, Jade Carey, Jordan Chiles, Sunisa Lee and Hezly Rivera is hoping to reclaim the Olympic team gold, and is making history as they do it. For the first time, the squad includes two Olympic all-around champions in Biles and Lee, and four of the five members are returning Olympians—Biles, Lee, Carey, and Chiles. The group is also the most diverse the U.S. has ever fielded in women’s gymnastics, a sport that until recently hadn’t featured many women of color.
Biles is already setting new standards At 27, she is the oldest US women’s gymnast to compete at the Olympics since the 1950s. “Now I definitely have to apologize to Aly [Raisman] for calling her grandma],” Biles, said of her teasing teammate Raisman for competing at her second Olympics in Tokyo at age 22. Biles ribbed Raisman for her early bedtimes and regular naps during those Games.
Now competing at her third Olympics, that longevity has helped to make Biles the most decorated gymnast in history, with 37 world and Olympic medals. If she makes the podium in Paris, she will become the most decorated U.S. Olympic gymnast, surpassing Shannon Miller who earned seven. And of course there is her vault—the Yurchenko double pike, now known as the Biles II. Biles is the only female gymnast to compete that skill.
But her teammates are equally pioneering. Team USA women have been Olympic individual all-around champions at every Games since 2004, so it’s not surprising that the team includes two. Part of that has to do with the fact that gymnastics is no longer a sport primarily for young teens. Since 2021, Name, Likeness and Image (NIL) laws passed by states and new NCAA policies have made it possible for athletes in many sports to continue competing at the collegiate level while taking advantage of sponsorship and revenue opportunities to fund their athletic careers, without turning professional. Before NIL, stricter lines between amateur and professional sports forced athletes to chose between collegiate competition as amateur athletes or turning professional to start capitalizing on their earning potential in sports like gymnastics. “If I could have had the best of both worlds, I would have loved to have had that,” says Nastia Liukin, 2008 individual all-around Olympic champion who never competed on a collegiate team because she turned pro in her pre-teens. “I see Suni and Jordan and Jade and all the girls competing again whether or not they are still in collegiate gymnastics and they are still fulfilling their goals and dreams—it’s great to see in my opinion.”
The rules are allowing more gymnasts to extend their gymnastics careers— Lee took time off from Auburn University; Carey decided to continue competing for Oregon State University while training at the elite level; and Chiles opted to sit out this year at UCLA to train for Paris.
In addition, while gymnastics skills have gotten more difficult, the knowledge and technology around recovery and rest have also advanced, making it easier for gymnasts—even older gymnasts—to continue pushing their bodies and minimizing the wear and tear on joints, muscles and the mind. “It’s about training smarter not harder,” says Gina Pongetti, owner of MedGym and consultant to USA Gymnastics and other women’s gymnastics teams. “As a 14 or 15 year old, you can get away with doing no recovery work. But we can’t produce and perform without being prepared and apologize to your body for what you’re doing—and the older you get, the more you do in the gym you have to do equally as much outside of the gym to get yourself back to neutral metabolically, physiologically and psychologically.”
All these factors will be important to determining if the U.S. women will continue to break barriers once the competition for the team event on July 30 in the Bercy arena.
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