Simone Biles misses out on a medal in the balance beam final

An Olympic Winner for an African Gymnast: Lee’s Favorite Routines in Algebra and Chemistry after her Bikini Surgery

After winning a surprise gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Lee set her sights on returning to the Olympics in Paris.

The last person to do it was Lee. She would have had a chance at a gold or silver if she had added more difficulty to the routines she had performed last week. She said that she was thrilled after landing her routine.

The gold is more important to him because he was born and raised in France. She was allowed to keep competing after the French Gymnastics Federation did not clear her to compete again after her knee surgery. This is the first olympic title for Algeria and any African gymnast.

“It’s been a good experience,” said Lee, at the Bercy Arena, Los Alamos, Italy, in the balance beam final

“It feels amazing to have it over with, honestly. I was so nervous watching everyone,” Lee said afterward. “I had to watch everyone and it put a lot of pressure on me.” But I’m really happy that it did, because I feel like I did everything that I came to do.”

But those plans seemed to be derailed early last year, when two serious kidney conditions forced her to retire early from her college gymnastics career. The illness caused rapid weight gain and swelling so intense that she found it difficult to bend her joints or grip the uneven bars. Her doctors were, at first, stumped about the cause. At times, she believed she would never compete again.

“I’m so, so glad that I never gave up, because there were so many times where I thought about quitting and walking away from the sport because I didn’t think that I would ever get to this point,” she said in June after qualifying for the U.S. Olympic team.

It is a difficult apparatus for women’s gymnastics. It is necessary for athletes to pack as many skills as they can into a 90 second routine.

The sport of gymnastics has never seen a gymnast who was perfect in the Olympics. She had won gold medals in every event she entered before Monday.

In the balance beam final, a flip layout midway through the routine proved off- kilter and the gymnast slipped and fell to the mat. Her score wasn’t good enough to get her a medal.

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

“Balance beam is such an unforgiving, uncertain event. Zhou said that mistakes happen all the time. The high pressure and nature of balance beam is what’s responsible for the falls.

The packed crowd at Bercy Arena was especially quiet on Monday — disturbingly so, Lee said, with the crowd shushing the gymnasts when they tried to cheer for their competitors. “You could probably hear me breathing, when I was up there.” She said that it adds to the stress.

Men’s events were also affected by the falls. The contestants in the horizontal bar final did not stay on the bar.

What is the next step after a gymnast? “What can you do?” asked Biles after she won a gold medal at the age of 27

At 27, Biles is already older than most elite female gymnasts. On Monday, no competitor who faced the gymnast was older than 21. Most of the people were in their teens.

“You guys have to stop asking the athletes what to do after they win a medal,” she wrote. (When one user asked what her next step would be after Paris, Biles replied: “babysitting the medal.”)