VIDEO: Simone Biles, Aly Raisman Lead Team USA To Gold and Silver Finish In Olympic All-Around
By TEAM USA // August 12, 2016
ABOVE VIDEO: Simone Biles locks up the gold medal with a 15.933 on the floor exercise, winning the all-around competition by over two whole points.
RIO DE JANEIRO (TEAM USA) – Halfway through the women’s all-around final, Simone Biles was in an unfamiliar, unthinkable place: Second place, that is.
But Biles, the three-time reigning world champion and heavy favorite for Olympic gold, steadied herself with the sturdiest – and icy-cool – balance beam routine, taking back the lead from Russia’s Aliya Mustafina and then never looking over her shoulder again, soaring to a historic gold medal two days after the U.S. women won their second straight team Olympic gold medal.
Biles, who scored a 62.198, becomes the 10th woman in history to win both team and individual all-around golds at an Olympic Games, and becomes the first reigning world champion to win the Olympic title since Lilia Podkopayeva in 1995 and ’96.
ABOVE VIDEO: After being beat out for a medal in a tiebreaker in London, Aly Raisman nails her floor routine to leapfrog Russia’s Aliya Mustafina for the silver medal and takes a second to soak it all in.
Her American teammate Aly Raisman launched a comeback of her own after the second rotation, when she was in fourth place. The Fierce Five veteran, now 22 and captain of the newly-coined Final Five, also hit on beam in rotation three and then delivered an Olympic-sized floor routine to give the U.S. the gold and silver medals. Raisman finished with a 60.098, Mustafina 58.665.
It marks the second time Team USA has gone 1-2 in Olympic history. Nastia Liukin won gold and Shawn Johnson captured the silver at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. The U.S. has now won an unprecedented four women’s all-around titles in a row: Carly Patterson in 2004, Liukin, Gabby Douglas in 2012 and Biles.
