PARIS – Simone Biles’ last day of competition at the Paris Games, likely the final day of her golden Olympic career, came with a silver lining.The 27-year-old Texan captured the silver medal in the floor exercise after a fall and a pair of missteps at Bercy Arena Monday afternoon prevented her from leaving Paris with her eighth and ninth career gold medals.Biles, who throughout her career both transformed and transcended her sport, was still part of another historic first – the first Olympic gymnastics medal podium featuring three Black women.Biles, who earlier at the Games led the U.S. to the team title and then reclaimed the individual all-around gold medal, appeared to be on her way to winning her eighth Olympic gold on the balance beam until she uncharacteristically fell off the beam late in the routine and slipped to fifth (13.100).Ninety minutes later, Biles landed out of bounds and then took another step backward on her second tumbling pass in the floor exercise. Because of the routine’s high degree of difficulty, she likely would have still held onto the gold medal if she hadn’t stepped out of bounds a second time late in the performance.Instead, Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade, runner-up to Biles in the all-around competition, won the floor title 14.166 to Biles’ 14.133, the .600 deduction for the American the difference.When the initial final scores were posted on the arena scoreboard, Romania’s Ana Barbosu was listed in third place at 13.766 points with Jordan Chiles of the U.S., Biles’ training partner who competed for UCLA, fifth at 13.666.Team USA coaches, believing Chiles was underscored, requested an official inquiry.“An inquiry can go either way,” Chiles said. “It can go down, can go up, or it can stay the same. So my coaches were like, ‘We’re going to try.’” It turned out that the protest was worth the effort. With her score adjusted to 13.766, Chiles had the bronze medal, her first individual medal in two Olympics and spot on the groundbreaking podium with Andrade and Biles.Biles was joined on the all-around medal stand at last year’s World Championships by Andrade and Shilese Jones of the U.S., the first time three Black women stood atop the podium at a major global gymnastics championships.“That was great,” Andrade said. “We already had that at the World Championships, and now to be able to do it at the Olympics means that we show the ...
