By Chang-Ran Kim
PARIS (Reuters) – Brazilian Rebeca Andrade’s second straight Olympic all-around silver appears to be tasting sweeter, especially since she had just given gymnastics GOAT Simone Biles a run for her money.
Andrade, a 25-year-old third-time Olympian, probably had no illusions about whether she would be able to beat Biles at the Paris Games on Thursday, but that’s not how the world’s most decorated gymnast remembered the evening.
“I don’t want to compete with Rebeca no more (sic). I’m tired,” Biles told reporters. “She’s way too close. I’ve never had an athlete that close so it definitely put me on my toes and it brought up the best athlete in myself.”
After completing a far-from-perfect asymmetric bars routine, Biles was left stone-faced and appeared nervous as Andrade nailed her routines in her bright-yellow, glittering leotard, putting her just 0.166 point behind Biles ahead of the final apparatus.
“I’m excited and proud to compete with her, but I don’t like it no more,” Biles told reporters. “I mean, I’m comfortable guys. I like that feeling. I was stressing.”
U.S. teammate and bronze medallist Sunisa Lee concurred: “I swear I’ve never seen you that stressed!”
Biles called Andrade a “phenomenal athlete” who forced her to “bring out the big guns this time” for the final floor apparatus.
And thanks to starting off with that big move, the Yurchenko double pike, or Biles II, on the vault, the 27-year-old clinched her sixth Olympic gold medal with a 1.199 surplus over Andrade.
As Biles beamed and struck her final pose, Andrade broke out in a radiant smile of her own.
“I was very proud of her,” she said, recalling that moment.
“It was amazing. I was very, very happy. Also because I had a very good competition, and I was proud of myself. So it was a smile of joy for her, a smile of joy for me, because I did my best.”
Andrade, who grew up poor in a single-mother household with seven brothers and sisters, had already made history in Tokyo three years ago by becoming the first female Brazilian artistic gymnast to win an Olympic medal when she finished behind Sunisa Lee in the all around. Three days later, she earned the South American nation their first gold in the vault event.
Andrade said Paris would likely be her last all-around competition at the Olympics, but that “the future belongs to God.”
Andrade and Biles will compete in the vault, balance beam and floor finals on Aug. 3 and Aug. 5.
(Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim, Karen Braun, Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber and Rory Carroll, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
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