Simone Biles hurts her leg in Olympic gymnastics qualifying but finishes 1st anyway

On her first day of competitors on the 2024 Olympic Video games, the gymnast Simone Biles appeared to harm her leg throughout a warm-up routine — an harm that prompted issues however finally didn’t preserve her from finishing her routines and ending in first place.

After the competitors, Biles’s coach, Cecile Landi, downplayed the importance of the harm. “She felt a little bit one thing in her calf,” Landi stated.

Regardless of the harm, Biles posted excessive scores, together with a competition-high 15.8 on the vault. Joined by robust performances from her teammates, it was sufficient to safe a spot for the U.S. girls’s gymnastics group within the group all-around closing on Tuesday, by which the U.S. is a favourite to win gold. The person all-around closing is about for Thursday.

There are at present no issues “in the intervening time” about Biles’s skill to compete in these occasions, Landi stated.

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Biles appeared to harm her leg throughout a warm-up for the ground train, her second equipment of the night time. After touchdown a cross, Biles walked gingerly off the mat the place she consulted together with her coaches then disappeared briefly from the ground. Afterward, she returned to have her ankle and decrease calf wrapped with thick athletic tape.

Regardless of the harm, Biles went on to finish her remaining routines, scoring a excessive of 15.8 on the vault. “By no means in her thoughts” was there a query of whether or not she would proceed, Landi stated.

Expectations for Biles and the remainder of the U.S. girls’s gymnastics group are sky-high at this Olympic Video games in Paris.

Biles, 27, has been performing on the highest degree of her profession since she returned to competitors final yr after a two-year hiatus. She is taken into account the favourite to win at the very least three particular person gold medals, together with a group all-around gold for the U.S.

An harm might set these aspirations again. “At first, I simply wish to make sure that she’s bodily okay, after which we’re simply going to go from there,” stated girls’s group technical lead Chellsie Memmel. “What she was capable of do, with wanting like she had some soreness or one thing in her decrease leg, is outstanding.”

Biles had briefly skilled a problem together with her calf earlier this month, Landi revealed. “After that, it stopped. Then a little bit bit once more at the moment,” Landi stated. “Just a bit ache in her calf.”

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The U.S. girls’s group completed their spherical of {qualifications} with the highest spot on the group rankings. Gymnasts Jordan Chiles and Sunisa Lee, the defending gold medalist within the particular person all-around, each completed about 3.5 factors behind Biles.

“Their objective, it’s totally apparent, is to come back house with a gold medal,” Memmel stated.

In three of Sunday’s rounds, Biles carried out final. Consequently, as her rivals rested, she drew the complete consideration of a crowd of about 15,000, a lot of whom — together with celebrities Snoop Dogg, Tom Cruise and Anna Wintour — had come largely to see her.

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