Italy’s D’Amato takes gold in the balance beam final

The London Olympic Gymnastics Competition rolled out on Monday, Oct. 17. Missing energy: A 17-year-old gymnast in the balance beam final

It is perhaps the trickiest apparatus in women’s gymnastics. Athletes must pack as many skills as they can into a 90-second routine — back handsprings, one-legged turns, flips, jumps and leaps, all performed on an apparatus just four inches wide.

Another factor: The Olympics is a long and grueling competition. By Monday, gymnasts had been competing for more than a week. The gymnast performed an Olympics-high 17 routines during the competition. She said that she has been out on that floor so many times and that exhaustion and all of that set in.

But in the balance beam final, a flip layout midway through Biles’s routine proved too off-kilter, and Biles slipped and fell to the mat. Ultimately, her score of 13.1 was not enough to earn her a medal.

Many of the other competitors in the final also fell or wobbled badly on the balance beam; it was one of those days. Italy’s Alice D’Amato, one of the few to perform her routine without a major error, took the gold. Italy’s Manila Esposito won bronze, followed by Zhou Yaqin of China.

“Balance beam is such an unforgiving, uncertain event. Mistakes happen all the time,” Zhou said afterward. “I think the falters, falls, stumbles are because of the high pressure and the nature of balance beam.”

Suni Lee had a bad fall in the beam final, which ended her chances for a medal. There was a lot of pressure. It was crazy to see how people were going down.

The sizable crowd was quiet, and at times spectators shushed the gymnasts as they tried to cheer on their competitors. Lee said, “We didn’t like that, it was just so silent in there.” “When I was up there, you could probably hear me breathing. It adds to the stress.”

The falls seeped into the men’s events, too. More than half the competitors in the horizontal bar final slipped off the bar or fell during their dismount.

Simone Biles at the London Gymnastics Open Gymnastics Invitation to Beijing, February 13 – 23rd, April 8 – A 30 year old girl’s first Olympic gymnast

Older than most elite female gymnasts, at just 27 years old, Simone’s age is already older. After the 25-year-old Rebeca Andrade and 23-year-old Jordan Chiles, no competitor who faced Biles on Monday was older than 21. Most were still in their teens.

“I’m not very upset or anything about my performance at the Olympics. I’m actually very happy, proud and even more excited that it’s over,” Biles said afterward.

After the Olympics, she hasn’t said if she’s going to retire from gymnastics. She chastised the journalists for asking.

The floor exercise gold medal was won by Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade, who was just 0.033 points behind, after Simone Biles was docked six-tenths of a point for stepping out of bounds. U.S gymnast Jordan Chiles won bronze.