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Olympic Trials: Simone Biles, Sunisa Lee headline U.S. team headed to Paris

john shipley, pioneer press
·4 min read

USA Gymnastics put together its women’s team for the 2024 Summer Games on Sunday night, and one has to like its chances in Paris. The team, determined after the U.S. Olympic Trials at Target Center, features the Games’ past two all-around gold medalists.

Simone Biles and St. Paul’s Sunisa Lee — who won the all-around gold medals at the 2016 and 2020 Games, respectively — finished 1-2 in the Trials all-around after the last day of competition on Sunday and headline the five-woman team that will travel next month to Paris.

Opening Ceremonies are scheduled for July 26.

“This one feels so different,” said Lee, diagnosed with chronic kidney disease in early 2023. “Everything has been hitting me like a freaking roller coaster. I have not stopped crying since (the team was announced).”

Biles won the automatic qualification by winning the all-around with 117.225 points in the two-day event. The other four athletes were chosen by a strategic selection committee that convened immediately after Sunday’s competition. Biles and Lee will be joined in Paris by Jordan Chiles and Jade Carey, their teammates at the 2020 Games, and Hezly Rivera, who substantially improved all four of her scores on Sunday to claim the final spot.

The selection committee is tasked with choosing the team USA Gymnastics believes has the best chance of medaling at the Games. Carey earned Team USA’s only individual event gold medal in Tokyo, the floor exercise. Rivera, 16, is, as of now, the youngest Olympian in the 2024 Games.

Lee, who attended South St. Paul High School before matriculating to Auburn, was the breakout star of the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, where she won the all-around gold medal and bronze in the uneven bars to help the U.S. win the team silver.

Asked if she has regained the form that made her an international star, Lee said, “I still think there’s more. I know today wasn’t my best competition. This week has been super difficult for all of us. I know I’m never going to be satisfied, but I think I’m getting there.”

Biles returns to the Games for the third time. In 2016 in Rio De Janeiro, she powered the team to gold by winning the all-around, vault and floor exercise. She also earned bronze in the beam.

But after winning bronze in the beam in Tokyo, where the games were held in 2021 because of the COVID pandemic, Biles withdrew from the final three individual events after being overwhelmed with anxiety.

Since then, Biles, 27, has proven she is still the world’s best gymnast, winning the all-around at the 2023 world championships and earning gold in all four events at the 2024 U.S. championships.

She was a lock to make the 2024 Olympic team, and maybe Lee was, too — although she had more to prove than Biles. Diagnosed with chronic kidney disease early in 2023, she withdrew from Auburn and didn’t start training again until January of this year.

“There were so many times I thought about quitting and just walking away from the sport,” Lee said, “because I didn’t think I could get back to this point.”

Lee won a couple of balance beam golds in national competitions, and won silver in the beam and placed fourth in the all-around at the U.S. Championships in late May, but this week was her biggest test.

“A year ago, I wasn’t sure this could happen,” Lee told the crowd after the team was announced. “I can’t wait to go to Paris.”

She received a standing ovation, the first in four days of competition at Target Center this week, after her first routine, the balance bars. Her score, 14.875, gave her the top combination on the bars for the Trials, 29.275.

“I didn’t know people loved me that much,” she said.

But Lee’s next routine, the balance beam — the other of her specialties — was uncharacteristically rough. She fell on her mount, then nearly fell again after a pair of difficult backward somersaults. Her score of 12.825 was her lowest of the competition.

But she rallied — her scores in the beam, floor vault improvements on her scores from Friday’s competition — for an overall score of 111.675.

Coincidentally, Biles and Chiles also fell on their bar routines.

“But I think this was such an intense competition, and it was like a roller coaster of emotions, and that’s one event where emotions can get the best of you,” Quinn said. “So, I’m not gonna worry too much about that; I know a lot of them are such perfectionists they’re going to go home and drill beam themselves. We’ll keep an eye on it, but I’m not too worried.”

Briefly

— Joscelyn Roberson and Leanne Wong are the traveling alternates. A small handful of challengers were eliminated by injuries this week. Skye Blakely injured an Achilles’ tendon during practices on Wednesday, and Kayla DiCello injured an Achilles on the first event of Friday’s competition. Shilese Jones suffered a leg injury during warmups Friday and withdrew from the Trials after being evaluated on Saturday.

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