Simone Biles and Suni Lee missed out on medals in the women’s gymnastics balance beam final Monday morning.
In her penultimate competition of the 2024 Games, Biles gave an impressive performance but stumbled and fell off the beam during her aerial series, giving her a score of 13.1 and a fifth-place finish.
Lee, who had been considered a strong contender for a podium finish, also fell when her foot slipped after a series of flips. She got the same score as Biles and finished sixth.
Italy’s Alice D’Amato performed with precision, receiving 14.366 to take gold. China’s Zhou Yaqin grabbed the silver, and Italy’s Manila Esposito won bronze.
Biles, who has 10 Olympic medals to her name, has made an incredible comeback so far in Paris after she dropped out of most events at the Tokyo Olympics and took a two-year break to prioritize her mental health.
On Saturday, Biles won gold on vault, while U.S. teammate Jade Carey scored the bronze. Biles also won gold in the all-around final, where Lee, the defending champ in that event, secured a bronze medal. The U.S. squad, who named themselves the “Golden Girls,” resoundingly won the team event. Lee also nabbed a bronze on the uneven bars on Sunday; Biles did not qualify for that final.
In Tokyo, Lee placed fifth in the beam final. Biles, who had withdrawn from all the other individual events and performed a relatively scaled-back beam routine, won bronze. At the 2016 Rio Olympics, Biles also took bronze on beam — the only event she competed in that she didn’t top.
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Both women overcame great hardship to make it to Paris. Biles opened up in the new Netflix documentary, “Simone Biles Rising,” about the traumas she worked through in therapy after the pressure and weight of expectation pushed her to a breaking point in Tokyo.
Lee spent a large chunk of 2023 dealing with two rare kidney disease diagnoses, after she woke up one day swollen all over her body. She had to endure months of pain, swelling and exhausting treatments before she was cleared early this year to put her full focus back on training for the Olympics.
After winning the all-around last week, Biles wrote on Instagram that “mental health matters.” In her own post following that competition, Lee said “this medal goes deeper than gymnastics.”
“I can’t even begin to express how much my health has taken away from me & the strength it has taught me, so to be here is the greatest achievement of all,” she wrote.
The last women’s gymnastics event of the Paris Games, the floor exercise, follows the beam competition on Monday. Biles is a favorite and could very well earn her 11th Olympic medal.
