Biles' coach, Cecil Lundy, said after the first day of competition that Biles had felt pain in her calf while warming up before the floor exercise, a recurrence of a problem she had had a few weeks earlier. Lundy said Biles never considered withdrawing. She finished the competition and rose to the top of the all-around standings. Biles' best performance ever led the U.S. in the all-around standings, beating arch rival Rebecca Andrade of Brazil by nearly two points and leading the U.S. team by more than five points over second-place Italy.
Scores don't carry over to the team final, but the difficulty of the routine and Biles' overwhelming strength give the U.S. women some room for error.
Chelsea Memmel, technical lead for the U.S. high performance staff, said before the competition began that she would give Biles the opportunity to perform on a lesser apparatus in the team final to take some of the pressure off of her. Lundy suggested that bars, Biles' weakest event, would be the apparatus she skips.
But because Biles will compete in all four lineups, she will also have the opportunity to debut a new element on bars that will be named after her if she succeeds. Because Biles did not advance to the bars final, the team event and all-around final will be her only chance to showcase the skill (a forward pivot element and one-and-a-half pirouettes) at the Games.
Jade Carey, who said she had been feeling unwell recently, is only in the vault lineup for the team event. She is the reigning Olympic gold medalist on floor exercise but struggled in the preliminary round, failing her final tumbling pass. Jordan Childs is in the lineup for every apparatus. Childs narrowly missed out on a spot in the individual all-around final; she finished fourth all-around but did not advance to the final due to higher scores from Biles and Sunisa Li. Only two skaters from each country may compete in the final.
In the team final, Li will compete on the balance beam, balance beam and floor exercises. 16-year-old Hezly Rivera will not be competing. Rivera was shaky on the balance beam in the preliminary round, but that was the event she had the best chance of competing in. U.S. staff likely placed emphasis on the preliminary round performances when deciding who would compete.
