Biles, Raisman Finish Storybook Olympics With Gold And Silver In Floor Exercise Final
By: Nick McCarvel
RIO DE JANEIRO – Simone Biles ended her Rio 2016 Olympic Games trip just like she started it: On top of the world.
The all-around champion and gold medalist in the team event as well as vault, Biles soared to a record-tying fourth gold medal with her victory in the floor routine final, edging out teammate Aly Raisman as the two Americans went 1-2 on the podium for a second time this Olympics.
It was a fitting end for the U.S. women, who have proved their superiority over the rest of the world over the past two weeks at the Rio Olympic Arena, winning nine medals total, including the coveted team final.
Added with the two won by the men, the U.S. has had its most successful gymnastics outing at an Olympics Games since 1984 by winning 11 medals so far. Team USA won 16 in ’84, the year both Mary Lou Retton and the U.S. men’s team won golds.
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Biles and Raisman were both nearly perfect in their gravity-defying floor routines, which provided for emotional finishes to the athletes’ respective Olympic Games, Biles soaring to a 15.966, Raisman a 15.500.
Great Britain’s Amy Tinkler, just 16, won the bronze, scoring a 14.933.
Biles ties Larisa Latynina (1956), Vera Caslavska (1968) and Ecaterina Szabo (1984) as women to have won four gold medals in one Games. The drive for five golds was thwarted Monday when Biles had a misstep on the balance beam, where she won the bronze medal behind teammate Laurie Hernandez’s silver.
She leaves these Olympics as the most decorated gymnast by far, however, with four golds and a bronze. No gymnast has won five medals at an Olympics since Nastia Liukin in 2008.
That also puts Biles in company with Liukin, Shannon Miller (1992) and Retton (’84) to have won five pieces of hardware at one Games.
Raisman was the reigning Olympic champion on floor, having won it in 2012 in London to become the first-ever U.S. woman to win the event. It is the first time Team USA has gone 1-2 in the event in Olympic history, and earns the U.S. its eighth and ninth medals in the event’s history at the Games, as well.
Raisman’s second consecutive medal on floor makes her the first American woman to earn an individual medal in back-to-back Olympics since Miller did so on balance beam in ’92 and 1996.
