Opinion: Disappointing qualifying had better be wake-up call for Simone Biles and Co.
TOKYO — Simone Biles and the U.S. women can still win the gold medal that has come to be expected as their birthright, or they could wind up on the wrong end of one of the most epic upsets in Olympic history.
That there’s no telling which way it’s going to go is almost as big a shock as the possibility itself.
For the first time in more than a decade – the 2010 world championships, to be exact – the American women on Sunday failed to finish anywhere but first, in either qualifying or the finals, at the Olympics or world championships.
This wasn’t a matter of one or two routines gone wrong, or some fluky result that will be impossible to duplicate. The Americans finished qualifying more than a point behind Russia, and that kind of gap should set off screeching alarms for everyone associated with the program.
“This was not the finals. This was getting into the finals,” national team coordinator Tom Forster said. “This might be a great awakening for us, and we’ll take advantage of it.”
Only if they realize that this could happen again. That, even with Biles, they are beatable.
There is a difference between handling pressure and handling adversity, and this group has never had to do the latter. They have the talent and the training, but do they have the humility to recognize that Russia has narrowed the gap on them and respond accordingly?
The laughter and smiles of the women at the end of the session didn’t seem reflective of a team that had gotten a wake-up call, and it’s impossible to know what was really going through their minds.
USA Gymnastics said even before the meet ended that the women would not be stopping in the mixed zone, a move out of the norm at the Olympics for even the biggest-named U.S. athletes. Even after getting embarrassed by Sweden in their Olympic opener Wednesday night, members of the U.S. women’s soccer team stopped to talk.
Forster didn’t seem overly concerned, either, putting the poor performance down on mental errors that are easily fixed. This is the first Olympics for Suni Lee, Grace McCallum and Jordan Chiles, he pointed out, and Chiles has never even been to a world championships before.
But Forster got testy when he was questioned about the decision to take McCallum for the team over MyKayla Skinner. Whatever the choice, he said after Olympic trials, it wouldn’t matter because the gold medal wasn’t “going to come down to tenths of a point.”
McCallum, up first on the Americans’ first event, floor exercise, bounced out of bounds on her opening tumbling pass. The Americans wound up counting her scores on all events, and Skinner’s would have been higher on everything but uneven bars.
“If anybody out there complained about USA Gymnastics only thought about medals, that was not the point. We did not make decisions over a couple of tenths for another medal,” Forster said. “We went on rank order because we thought it was a good order and I still feel good about it.”
To be fair, everyone had a hand in this debacle.
Lee’s floor routine wasn’t crisp, and she landed her vault low. Chiles, who hadn’t made a major mistake in her previous four meets this year, dragged her feet on the mat as she transitioned from the high bar to low, and fell off balance beam.
Even Biles wasn’t immune. She bounced completely off the carpet on floor exercise, her feet nearly slipping out from beneath her, and also landed out of bounds on her first vault, both errors costing her three-tenths in deductions. She also overcooked her dismount on balance beam and stumbled three steps back.
“We’ll just focus on fixing the mistakes,” Forster said. “Staying in bounds would help. Simone took three big steps on her beam dismount. I’ve never seen her do that before. So those are all fixable. They’re fixable.”
Scores are wiped clean for Tuesday’s team final, and the format changes, too. Three gymnasts from each team compete on each event, and every score counts. It leaves no margin for error, no room for complacency or doubt.
From anyone.
The Americans have Biles, the greatest gymnast the sport has ever seen. And most days, that is going to be enough to put them out of reach of everyone else. But it is no longer a given.
The question is whether they believe that, or their own hype. The difference might well determine what color medal they take home.
Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 2021 Olympics: Simone Biles and Co. need wake-up call after qualifying
