Jenna Fryer
Associated Press
PARIS — Simone Biles, the greatest gymnast of her generation, ended the final day of the Paris Olympics with yet another medal win.
The woman who only a few years ago never thought she’d be here took second place on the floor exercise on Monday and leaves Paris with three gold medals and one silver in what may be her final Olympics.
It was the first time in her career that Biles did not win the floor exercise at a major championship. She came in second to Brazil’s Rebecca Andrade. American gymnast Jordan Childs came in third, but she dropped to the bronze medal after U.S. coaches asked to reconsider the difficulty of the routine.
The review resulted in a slight change to her score, allowing her to reach the podium. The three Black women posed together four days after Biles, Andrade and Hmong American Sunisa Lee stood in the same place after the all-around. Their collective success symbolized that the sport is becoming more diverse and more inclusive at the highest levels.
Before the floor exercise, Biles and Li both missed out on medals on the balance beam, with both making errors and raising questions about whether Paris organizers’ decision not to play music during the competition created a distracting, eerie silence.
Biles now has 11 Olympic medals under her belt and has not ruled out competing in Los Angeles in 2028.
Here are some highlights from day 10 of the Paris Olympics.
Pole Vault World Record
The pole vaulter known as “Mondo” puts on a truly amazing performance.
As the action on the Olympic track finished for the evening, and 80,000 spectators at the Stade de France were still on their feet, Armand Duplantis hoisted the pole onto his right shoulder, took a deep breath, hefted the long hunk of carbon fibre and launched it down the runway and into the night sky.
He already had another Olympic gold medal under his belt, and when he slammed into the pads on the other side of the sky-high pink bar, another world record was set.
The 24-year-old Duplantis, who was born in Louisiana and competed for his mother’s native Sweden, cleared 6.25 meters (20 feet, 6 inches) to break his ninth world record, but his first on the sport’s biggest stage.
His next move was to sprint out to the stands to embrace his girlfriend and celebrate his record and his second Olympic gold medal with friends and family clad in yellow and blue. The King and Queen of Sweden were also there to witness Sweden’s latest history-making leap into the pole vault pit.
“Honestly, it’s hard to comprehend,” he said. “If I can’t beat this moment in my career, then so be it. I don’t think there’s much better than what’s happened right now.”
It only seemed natural that the Duplantis drama would occur while Noah Lyles was in the building.
The night after the American sprinting star lit up the track with a 0.005-second victory in the 100 meters, Lyles was on hand to accept his gold medal but watched as Duplantis stunned the field with a 6.25-meter jump — the height of an average two-story building.
The drama unfolded for more than half an hour at the end of the night, long after the slow and bizarre women’s 5,000m had finished and after Keeley Hodgkinson had won Great Britain’s first athletics medal of the Games in the final race of the night, the 800m.
That usually marks the time when people start heading for the exits.
However, Mondo’s encore was worth listening to until the end, and most of the audience stuck around until the end.
“Mond is an exceptional jumper in four ways,” said runner-up Sam Kendricks of the United States. “First, he’s had great coaches over the years. He’s had a lot of time to practice. He has great equipment and he understands the game. He’s a fan of the sport, and he has God’s help in that.”
With two consecutive gold medals and breaking the record nine times (by one centimetre each time), Duplantis has become second only to, and perhaps surpassed, Sergei Bubka as the greatest athlete of all time in the event.
Duplantis is the world record holder in the shot put and is considered one of the best athletes on the field side of the sport, along with three-time gold medalist Ryan Crowther of the United States.
And when it comes to delivering great theatre, as he showed once again, Duplantis is in a class of his own.
Duplantis beat Kendricks and set an Olympic record by clearing 6.10 metres, then raised the bar a centimetre higher than the world record.
After his first failure, he used the downtime while Lyles was accepting his gold medal for winning the 100 meters to watch a video on a tablet with his parents, whom he met decades ago on the track team at Louisiana State University.
Another mistake followed, followed by another long break.
Fans clapped along to the rhythm and sang the French song “Alleur de Feu” (Light the Fire), preparing for Mondo’s leap into history.
A homegrown talent, Duplantis learned the sport in a pole vaulting arena his parents dug in the backyard of their Lafayette, Louisiana home.
As he jumped in the pits all afternoon, Duplantis repeatedly visualized himself attempting a world record on his final Olympic jump.
Perhaps no one took into account the partying that comes with a world record and an Olympic title: an hour after the stadium had emptied, the song “Dancing Queen” by Swedish group ABBA was playing loud and proud outside the stadium.
“For it to actually happen and for me to make the right jump at the right time, I just don’t know how to explain it,” he said. “It means so much to me, it’s indescribable.”
Kenya’s Chebet wins women’s 5000m outdoor race
Duplantis capped an evening that saw an upset by Kenya’s Beatrice Chebet in the women’s 5,000 meters. Chebet’s Kenyan teammate Faith Kipyegon, one of the world’s best distance runners, won the silver medal after winning an appeal against an initial disqualification for elbowing world record holder Gudav Tsegay.
This appeal helped Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands win the bronze medal, and he will also compete in the 10,000m and marathon, aiming to repeat his three medals in long-distance events from the Tokyo Olympics.
Lyles returns to the track
The day after his memorable 100m victory, Lyles returned to the track, this time aiming for his second gold medal in the 200m.
He won his first heat in 20.19 seconds and fought hard thereafter to win the gold medal.
He said he did it all on just over four hours of sleep.
“I had to stop watching the race,” he said of his decision to end the race at 2:45 a.m. after his win. “I’d been stomping around all day just trying to get my body moving, trying to get it going.”
U.S. discus thrower Val Allman wins back-to-back titles
Val Allman easily outthrew China’s Feng Bin with a throw of 69.50 metres to win her second consecutive Olympic gold medal.
With Allman and Kendricks’ wins, the United States won a total of 11 medals at the games, including three gold medals.
Hodgkinson wins Great Britain’s first Olympic gold medal in athletics
Keeley Hodgkinson won the 800 metres in 1 minute 56.72 seconds to claim Great Britain’s first gold medal at the athletics meet.
The gold medal matches the silver she won behind Asing Mu in 2021, who failed to qualify for the Olympics after stumbling during the U.S. qualifiers.
U.S. beach volleyball has mixed results
Two U.S. teams lost on the sand at Eiffel Tower Stadium, with Taryn Cross and Kristen Nass losing to Canada in the women’s quarterfinals just hours after Chase Budinger and Myles Evans lost to Norway in the men’s quarterfinals.
Miles Evans and Andy Benes were the only two competitors to advance from the day, joining Kelly Chen and Sarah Hughes in the elite eight.
Both Kross and Nuss are ranked No. 2 in the world, and Nuss said she was “a little hurt, for sure.”
Brandi Wilkerson and Melissa Humana Paredes beat Nuss and Cross 21-19, 21-18 to send the country, which has won four of the last five women’s gold medals, to the finals with just one team.
Former NBA players Budinger and Evans were defeated in straight sets by Norway, the defending Olympic champions. Paris has already seen the defeat of Germany’s Laura Ludwig, a five-time Olympian and Rio de Janeiro gold medalist, and the 42-year-old Herrera has announced her retirement.
Swimming in the Seine
The Seine has been deemed safe enough for swimming after organisers said bacteria levels in Paris’ long-polluted waterway were at acceptable levels, and Olympic triathletes plunged into the murky waters for a mixed relay event.
The plan to hold the triathlon and marathon swimming events on the Seine was an ambitious one because, with some exceptions, swimming in the river has been banned since 1923 because it is considered to have too many toxic substances.
Water quality tests were carried out on Sunday night and the results showed that the water quality at the triathlon venue had improved compared to the previous hours and was within standards set by the World Triathlon Federation by Monday morning.
In the team relay, after a very close sprint, the German team won the gold medal, the USA won the silver medal and Great Britain won the bronze medal.
The decision to allow swimming events in the Seine came after the Belgian Olympic Committee said Sunday it was withdrawing its team from the mixed relay triathlon after one of the athletes fell ill after swimming in the river last week. Three more of the more than 100 triathletes who took part in last Wednesday’s men’s and women’s races fell ill in the days since, but it is unclear whether the water was to blame.
Spain reaches second consecutive Olympic soccer final
Juanl Sánchez came off the bench to lead Spain to a record-tying fifth Olympic men’s football final, scoring in the 85th minute to secure a 2–1 win over Morocco at the Stade de Marseille.
Spain will face hosts France in the final on Friday, who reached the final with a 3-1 win over Egypt in the second leg of their semi-final.
Morocco led 1-0 at halftime thanks to a penalty kick in the 37th minute from tournament top scorer Sofiane Rahimi.
Spain equalized in the 65th minute when Fermín López made a quick move inside the penalty area and fired a low left-footed shot into the bottom corner. It was the Barcelona midfielder’s fourth goal of the tournament, but he was booked for being too excited and kicking the corner flag in two.
With an assist from Lopez, Sanchez scored the winning goal, firing a low ball into the top corner of the goal.
Spain, which won gold at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, lost to Brazil in the final at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago.
British cyclists set world record in women’s team sprint
British trio Katie Marchant, Sophie Capewell and Emma Finucane smashed the world record in the women’s team sprint, beating New Zealand in a head-to-head gold medal showdown in track cycling’s opening round.
After the first 250 metres of the three-lap race, the British trio found themselves behind Rebecca Petch, Sharn Fulton and Ellesse Andrews, but after the second lap they quickly took the lead and sprinted on the final lap to finish in 45.196 seconds to claim Great Britain’s first medal at the Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines National Velodrome.
Despite its proud sprinting tradition, Great Britain has repeatedly missed out on the podium since the event was first held in 2008.
First published: August 5, 2024 at 9:53 pm
