(LONDON) — An Olympic athlete has had his finger amputated after he suffered an injury just so he can play in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
Just two weeks ago, Matthew Dawson, a 30-year-old hockey player from Australia, suffered a badly broken finger on his right-hand during a team training session in Perth, Australia, and, after consulting with doctors, he found out the injury would take months to recover from and that he would miss out on the opportunity to play in his third Olympic Games.
But instead of opting for a long recovery, Dawson made a decision that would shock his teammates and has already made headlines around the world. He decided to amputate his finger so that he could compete in the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.
“There was a bit of shock within the team,” said Dawson’s teammate, Aran Zalewski, in an interview in Paris in the run up to the opening ceremony on Friday evening. “We didn’t really know what to think. And then we heard that he went to the hospital and chopped his finger off, which was pretty interesting because I know people would give an arm and a leg and even a little bit of finger to be here sometimes.”
“When you’ve spent a lifetime of choice and sacrifice to come and compete at the highest level, I think for him it was an easy decision,” Zalewski continued. “We’ve got his back. We’re fully supportive of his decision. We played a game [on Monday] and he seems absolutely fine. It’s great to see that his finger is going to be all right and he’ll be able to play with us throughout the tournament.”
Dawson, who underwent surgery on his right hip, a month after the Commonwealth Games in 2018, has had a long list of injuries during his career, including suffering a fractured eye socket in Feb. 2018 in a training accident, causing him to miss the Sultan Azlan Shah Cup in Malaysia the following month.
Dawson took up hockey when he was 8-years-old after his sister gave up netball and his parents signed her up for the local hockey team.
“As little brothers tend to do, I tagged along and watched my sister play hockey over the next couple of years,” Dawson explained in an interview in Nov. 2018.
Dawson is now set to be a three-time Olympian after competing in 2016 and 2020, where he won a silver medal with his squad after losing to Belgium on penalties. He is also a two-time Commonwealth Games gold medalist in 2018 and 2022 and has two Hockey World Cup appearances under his belt where he came in third with his team in 2018 and fourth in 2023.
(PARIS) — From Bacon (both Sarah, a diver, and Phoebe, a swimmer) to Coffey (both Olivia, a rower, and Sam, a soccer player), Team USA will be sending a veritable smorgasbord of talent to Paris for the 2024 Olympics.
You probably know the big names — such as gymnast Simone Biles and swimmer Katie Ledecky — but there are 592 U.S. Olympians competing in Paris.
The returning members of Team USA have already won 110 gold medals before arriving in Paris, led by swimmers Ledecky (seven) and Caeleb Dressel (seven) and women’s basketball player Diana Taurasi (five). Ledecky also has the most total medals (10) while Biles has seven total medals, including four gold. No one else on the team has more than four gold.
Not sure who else to pay attention to in Paris? We’ve compiled a list of the 10 Americans to know when the Summer Games kick off this weekend.
Chase Budinger, beach volleyball
If you think you remember a basketball player named Chase Budinger, who played eight seasons in the NBA and was co-MVP of the McDonald’s All-American Game in 2006 alongside Kevin Durant, you’re probably confused why “beach volleyball” is next to his name above. But no, that’s not a typo.
Budinger, the California Basketball Player of the Year in his senior season in high school, hung up his basketball shoes in 2017 and hit the beach for his second-best sport — volleyball. Then again, maybe it’s his best sport?
The 36-year-old was actually a huge volleyball recruit in high school, too. But he passed up playing the indoor game for a college basketball career at Arizona. Now, he and partner Miles Evans will be heading to Paris to play beach volleyball as part of Team USA.
Evans and Budinger only started playing together last year, but they are the U.S.’s No. 2 team behind Andy Benesh and Miles Partain. Partain, just 22 years old, and Benesh are a great story in their own right and probably a better bet to win gold from the U.S. teams. They’re ranked No. 9 in the world.
But Budinger and Evans are ranked No. 13 and have two tournament wins in less than 20 matches as partners.
Katie Moon, pole vault
There was definitely a pun to be made with Moon’s last name, but for now we’ll just focus on her out-of-this-world talent.
Moon, then known by her maiden name, Nageotte, won gold in pole vault in Tokyo and followed that up with world titles in 2022 and 2023. She also took home top honors on the Diamond League circuit (a regular season, so to speak) last year.
Her toughest competition will likely be Great Britain’s Molly Caudery, who has also grabbed headlines for her modeling work, and Australia’s Nina Kennedy, who won at the last Diamond League event before the Olympics. Caudery won the indoor world championships in March and has the world best this year (4.92 meters).
Moon can be a streaky jumper. She finished eighth (last place) at last week’s London Diamond League event and was upset by unheralded (and unsponsored) Bridget Williams in the U.S. Olympic trials.
But Moon’s personal best of 4.95 meters, set ahead of the Tokyo Games, is better than any of her competitors and back-to-back gold is easily within her reach.
Katie Grimes, swimming
Theoretically, swimming is swimming, no matter where you are doing it. But it’s unusual for a talented swimmer in the pool to also compete in open-water swimming. No American woman had ever done both until this year.
Grimes will be doing the double in Paris, swimming in the 1,500 meters and the 400-meter individual medley indoors as well as the 10-kilometer open-water event — still scheduled to be held in the Seine River as long as no one’s skin melts off during training.
Grimes is actually a bit of a prodigy. She was Team USA’s youngest member in Tokyo at just 15 years old. At 18, she’s still one of the youngest Americans at the Games (gymnast Hezly Rivera, 16, is the youngest).
She had already qualified for Paris in the open-water event before showing up at the indoor swim trials in Indianapolis last month by taking bronze in the 10-kilometer outdoor event in July 2023. She was actually the first American to make the U.S. team in any sport.
No woman has ever won a medal in their career in both the pool and open-water competition (though it has happened on the men’s side). Grimes has a real chance to do both in the same Olympics.
Salif Mane, triple jump
No slight to Fairleigh Dickinson University, but the New Jersey school isn’t exactly known as a track and field powerhouse. In fact, Mane was the only competitor from FDU at the NCAA track and field championships in Eugene, Oregon, last month as he wrapped up his senior season.
That didn’t stop the triple jumper from winning Fairleigh Dickinson’s first individual national title in any sport and then upsetting everyone at the U.S. Olympic trials.
Mane jumped a personal best 17.52 meters at the U.S. Olympic trials just weeks after setting a previous personal best (17.14 meters) at the NCAA championships.
Now the Bronx native has a chance to continue a legacy in triple jump for the U.S., which has won five of the last 10 gold medals in the event.
Tara Davis-Woodhall, long jump
Mane was a jumper who wasn’t on many people’s radar not long ago, but Davis-Woodhall has been a star jumper with gold medal potential for awhile. She won gold in junior world championships and even broke future Olympian Marion Jones’ California high school state record that had stood since 1993 (well before she was born).
She’s hardly been a disappointment on the senior level, but Davis-Woodhall is finally realizing her full potential. No doubt the most exuberant and outgoing member of Team USA — she’s never not bouncing around with a megawatt smile — she is currently ranked No. 1 in the world in long jump.
Davis-Woodhall, who is married to three-time Paralympic medalist Hunter Woodhall, finished second in the U.S. Olympic trials in 2021 and qualified for the Olympics as well. But the then-22-year-old finished a disappointing sixth at the Tokyo Games.
The weight of expectations appeared to lie heavily on her shoulders at this year’s trials. She scratched on both her first two jumps in the finals, but qualified to continue on with her third and final jump. but she qualified for the Paris Games on her last jump of the competition.
Davis has had the best season of her career, finishing first in every competition she’s competed in, including a win in the indoor world championships in March. She hasn’t competed in any Diamond League events, but has the second-best jump (7.18 meters) in the world this year. Germany’s Malaika Mihambo, the gold medalist in Tokyo and the owner of the longest jump in the world this year (7.22 meters), will be Davis-Woodhall’s stiffest competition.
Fiona O’Keeffe, marathon
There’s beginner’s luck and then there’s just beginner’s talent. O’Keeffe, who won at the U.S. Olympic trials in the first professional marathon of her life, hopes it’s the latter.
The 26-year-old literally put her blood, sweat and tears into her first marathon in Orlando back in February. She crossed the finish line in 2 hours, 22 minutes and 10 seconds — a trials record — with her bib covered in blood, which she ascribed to a “little chafing situation.”
O’Keeffe was an All-American at Stanford University as a 5,000-meter and 10,000-meter runner before taking her talent to the road.
Medalling in Paris is unlikely given the depth of the Ethiopian and Kenyan teams, but she has huge potential in a discipline that is traditionally dominated by veteran runners.
Jimmer Fredette, 3×3 basketball
“College player” is a derisive term that has plagued college basketball and football players for decades. From Tim Tebow to Adam Morrison to Charlie Ward (in both sports), the names are well-known by sports fans.
Fredette, who was a star at Brigham Young University, was given the label well before he even left college. He still developed a legion of fans for his reputation as a gunner and ultimate competitor (think Caitlin Clark before Caitlin Clark). He led the nation in scoring as a senior in 2010-11, earning Associated Press player of the year honors, and setting just about every scoring record in BYU history.
He was drafted 10th overall by the Sacramento Kings in 2011, but bounced around to the Chicago Bulls, New Orleans Pelicans, New York Knicks and Phoenix Suns in an unremarkable NBA career. He was certainly never close to making the men’s Olympic basketball team.
And yet, at 35 years old, more than five years removed from his last game in the NBA, he’s shooting for gold in Paris as a member of the U.S. 3×3 basketball team — a half-court, outdoor version of the game that debuted in Tokyo. (The U.S. men’s team didn’t even qualify for the Tokyo Games, so this is technically the United States’ debut in the sport.)
Jimmermania has been revived again.
Kennedy Blades, wrestling
Blades already has the coolest name on the U.S. team, but now she’s looking for some hardware in Paris.
The 20-year-old from Chicago, who is already posing for photos in Paris with Snoop Dogg and getting praise from MMA legend Jon Jones, is a rising star in wrestling — and maybe combat sports in general (can it be long before the UFC comes calling?).
Blades barely missed the Tokyo Games, losing to Tamyra Mensah-Stock in the final match in the 76 kg weight class, at just 17. Mensah-Stock went on to win gold in 2021 and Blades’ profile in the sport skyrocketed. She was used to defying expectations though, becoming the first girl to win a state title against boys in the annual Illinois Kids Wrestling Federation tournament at just 12 years old.
Blades defeated Adeline Gray, a six-time world champion who took the silver medal in Tokyo, to qualify for Paris.
Her timeline for greatness has moved up.
Emma Hunt, climbing
It will take the women’s Olympic gold medalist about 10.5 seconds to run the 100-meter dash. Hunt wonders why they waste so much time.
The 21-year-old — who was ranked No. 1 in the world at just 18 — owns the American speed climbing record, climbing the 15-meter-high wall in 6.55 seconds. She’ll be looking to spend as short a time competing in Paris as possible as speed climbing is contested as a standalone sport for the first time (In Tokyo, bouldering, lead and speed were combined in one event).
Hunt set the U.S. record in Salt Lake City in May when she won the World Cup final against Aleksandra Kalucka of Poland. Kalucka’s countrywoman, Aleksandra Miroslaw, holds the current world record — which has fallen repeatedly in recent years — at 6.25 seconds.
Both Polish climbers will be among the top competition for Hunt in Paris, as will be Indonesian star Desak Made Rita Kusuma Dewi, who edged out Hunt for the world title in 2023 (Miroslaw took bronze, while Kalucka took fourth).
Victor Montalvo, breaking
We’re not here to legislate whether breakdancing — officially known as breaking — should be in the Olympics. Besides, the United States has the best competitor in the world, so just wait for another gold medal.
Montalvo, 30, is the defending world champion in breaking. Known as B-Boy Victor, he has carried on a back-and-forth rivalry with Canadian Phil Wizard in each of the last three world championships. Victor won in 2021 and 2023, while the Canadian won in 2022.
The sport, which developed from the 1980s dance craze, takes place in head-to-head “battles” over multiple rounds. Each dancer is graded in five categories: technique, vocabulary, originality, musicality and execution. The scoring is done by the judges in real time with winners advancing through a bracket.
(NEW YORK) — As the 2024 Summer Olympics officially kick off in Paris on July 26, USA Today sports columnist Christine Brennan joined Brad Mielke on Thursday’s episode of “Start Here,” ABC News’ flagship daily news podcast, and dived into the concession made by the U.S. Olympic Committee and officials from Salt Lake City, Utah, in order to secure the city’s bid to host the 2034 Winter Games, which the city also hosted in 2002.
START HERE: But as far as the U.S. is concerned, the biggest Olympics story of the day did not have anything to do with Paris at all. In the wee hours of the morning, Salt Lake City, Utah, learned it will once again be the host of the Winter Olympics, in 2034. That was the sound of people cheering this news at 4 a.m. local time in Salt Lake City. They’ve got a decade to get even more amped up.
But the International Olympic Committee announced a rule here that has already created a really weird vibe. Let’s take you to Paris right now, where Christine Brennan is covering the Games. She’s a sports columnist with USA Today…she’s also an ABC News contributor. Christine, can you just explain what’s going on with the future Olympics?
BRENNAN: Brad, this was crazy. Salt Lake City is really the only city that wants to host the Winter Olympics. It’s getting harder and harder for the International Olympic Committee to find cities and countries that are interested. It costs so much money, it’s so difficult. Obviously, climate change, you know, all the things that we know about what it is with an Olympics.
So you get a city like Salt Lake City, which hosted the 2002 Olympics and did a fabulous job, great Olympic Games. And this was a slam dunk. Everyone just expected it would just go without any issue, any problem. Instead, several International Olympic Committee members proposed an amendment. And they want the U.S. to drop the FBI investigation into the Chinese doping controversy.
START HERE: Yeah, I think the language was like the U.S. cannot “undermine the world anti-doping agency,” they can’t undermine WADA, which you’d think like, why would they do that? And yet it apparently all goes back to this federal investigation of Chinese athletes. Can you brush us up on that?
BRENNAN: We just found out about it. The New York Times and a German public broadcasting company exposed it a few months ago. Chinese swimmers, the 23 swimmers tested positive before the Tokyo Olympics. But it was never revealed, no transparency. They went to compete in Tokyo and three, three golds. They won three golds. And 11 of them, of the 23, are competing here. And so all these athletes that competed in Tokyo, including Katie Ledecky in a relay, came in second to people who had tested positive a few months earlier. That outrages the United States.
Because of a law known as the Rodchenkov Act, it allows the U.S., in this case, the FBI, to go after officials or others in a criminal manner and criminal prosecution, who were involved in this doping scheme. They’ve already served a subpoena to the World Aquatics executive director. Again that’s swimming, to try to figure out this doping scheme, what happened and why the world didn’t know about it.
START HERE: OK, so this is like an ultimatum. You can have the Games if you stop investigating this. What did U.S. organizers do?
BRENNAN: Stunningly and amazingly, just I cannot believe it, the Salt Lake City officials and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee caved.
START HERE: Wow.
BRENNAN: They caved. And so while you had Katie Ledecky an hour and a half earlier in a press conference talking about the importance of clean sport. One floor and 90 minutes later, you had these officials caving in to demands, as from the International Olympic Committee, for them to get rid of the investigation into something that Katie Ledecky — Michael Phelps just testified in front of Congress — that they care so much about.
START HERE: Right and it’s interesting, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency sounded pretty furious about this, but they sound more upset with the IOC for pressuring Salt Lake City. Local organizers though, Christine, sounded upbeat about this. You had Utah Gov. Spencer Cox yesterday defending all this. But I guess I’m just confused as to why the organizers made this concession? Like if the U.S. has been so public about wanting to go after these people and protecting their own athletes, frankly?
BRENNAN: Because they were scared they were going to lose the Olympics otherwise. I cannot believe that Salt Lake officials and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee didn’t just say no.
Now, what’s going to end up happening here, I believe, is that it will be a rude awakening, because I cannot imagine Congress taking too kindly to what the U.S. Olympic Committee and the Salt Lake officials just did. And I’ve got to believe that if any of these officials show up and deserve to be arrested, they’re going to get a knock on the door and they’re going to be arrested. And so they may be the most shocked people on the planet when they thought they got this deal from Salt Lake City.
So it’s truly a mess. It’s stunning. It’s exactly the way that they did not want to kick off the Olympic week. But it is something worthy of all of our attention.
I think for a lot of people, they remember Salt Lake City and they remember the bribery scandal from 1999. Once again, Salt Lake City officials are involved again in a major controversy of their own making. This is supposed to be such a positive thing, and now they’re mired right back in controversy, just as they were at the beginning of the century.
START HERE: Wow. Unbelievable. And Christine Brennan will, of course, have a column in USA Today that’s out actually right now this morning. Thank you so much, Christine.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Thursday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
Baltimore Orioles 7, Miami Marlins 6
NATIONAL LEAGUE
San Diego Padres 3, Washington Nationals 0 L.A. Dodgers 6, San Francisco Giants 4 N.Y. Mets 3, Atlanta Braves 2
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Detroit Tigers 3, Cleveland Guardians 0 Texas Rangers 2, Chicago White Sox 1 Tampa Bay Rays 13, Toronto Blue Jays 0 Oakland Athletics at Los Angeles Angels
Hezly Rivera warming up on beam on Day Two of the 2024 U.S.Olympic Team Gymnastics Trials at Target Center, June 28, 2024, in Minneapolis. (Karen Hickey/isi Photos/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Of the nearly 600 American athletes representing the red, white and blue at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Hezly Rivera will make history as the youngest athlete to compete for Team USA.
The New Jersey-born gymnast secured her spot on the highly competitive women’s team — led by Simone Biles — with a gold medal winning balance beam performance at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in Minnesota last month.
Meet the youngest athlete on Team USA, Hezly Rivera
Ahead of the first women’s gymnastics qualifying event on Sunday, July 28, the first-time Olympian spoke to ABC News’ Good Morning America about what it means to be part of the impressive five-woman roster alongside 2020 Tokyo veterans Suni Lee, Jordan Chiles, and Jade Carey.
“It feels incredible — this doesn’t have to happen too often, so I’m very excited to be the youngest team member of the group,” Rivera, 16, said. “I felt so happy and super excited because this is what I’ve been working for my whole life. So for it to finally come true is so exciting and so surreal.”
Team USA’s rising star may be the rookie of the team, but Rivera is going into the competition with confidence.
“I need to trust myself and trust my training, because my muscle memory is there and it’s very strong,” she said. “I just have to do what I do in the gym. And I know everything will be perfect.”
While Rivera doesn’t know which events she’ll be competing in at the Games just yet, she told GMA that in practice she’s training for “vault, bars, beam and floor.”
Rivera’s sister was the first person who picked up on her early enthusiasm for gymnastics “because from a very young age, I was already doing cartwheels and handstands and bridges everywhere.”
But it wasn’t until she attended a friends’ fifth birthday party at a local gym, where she recalled “flipping around on all the equipment” and said, “the coaches told my parents that they should put me — on a little mini team — and that I had potential.”
Hezly Rivera facts and career highlights
National Competition Results 2024 U.S. Olympic Team Trials, Minneapolis, Minn: Gold in balance beam; 4th in uneven bars; 5th in all-around; 8th in floor exercise 2024 Winter Cup, Louisville, Ky: Gold in balance beam; bronze medalist in all-around and floor exercise 2023 Xfinity U.S. Gymnastics Championships, San Jose, Calif: Gold in all-around, uneven bars and balance beam 2023 Winter Cup, Louisville, Ky.: Gold all-around, balance beam and floor exercise 2022 OOFOS U.S. Gymnastics Championships, Tampa, Fla: Bronze in floor exercise 2022 U.S. Classic, Salt Lake City, Utah: Gold in balance beam; silver in all around and floor exercise 2022 Winter Cup, Frisco, Texas: Bronze in all-around 2018 Hopes Classic, Salt Lake City, Utah: Gold in floor exercise
International Competition Results 2024 Jesolo Trophy, Jesolo, Italy: Bronze in team competition 2023 Junior World Championships, Antalya, Turkey: Silver in team competition 2022 DTB Pokal Cup, Stuttgart, Germany: Gold in team competition
Nickname: Hez Birthday: June 4, 2008 Hometown: Oradell, NJ High School Graduation Year: 2026 Year she began gymnastics: 2013 Favorite Event: Bars Parents: Henry Rivera and Heidy Ruiz, who are both from the Dominican Republic Siblings: Hanly Rivera and Carhelis Abreu Favorite school subject: Math Hobbies or favorite activities: Shopping Favorite book: Mamba Mentality Favorite movie: Spy Kids 2 Favorite Food: Rice and beans with chicken and avocado
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Wednesday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE Miami Marlins 6, Baltimore Orioles 3 N.Y. Mets 12, N.Y. Yankees 3 Minnesota Twins 5, Philadelphia Phillies 4 Arizona Diamondbacks 8, Kansas City Royals 6 Colorado Rockies 20, Boston Red Sox 7
AMERICAN LEAGUE Cleveland Guardians 2, Detroit Tigers 1 L.A. Angels 2, Seattle Mariners 1 Toronto Blue Jays 6, Tampa Bay Rays 3 Texas Rangers 10, Chicago White Sox 2 Houston Astros 8, Oakland Athletics 1
NATIONAL LEAGUE Cincinnati Reds 9, Atlanta Braves 4 (Gm 1 Doubleheader, Gm 2 PPD) San Diego Padres 12, Washington Nationals 3 Pittsburgh Pirates 5, St. Louis Cardinals 0 Milwaukee Brewers 3, Chicago Cubs 2 San Francisco Giants 8, Los Angeles Dodgers 3
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Tuesday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE Miami Marlins 6, Baltimore Orioles 3 N.Y. Mets 3, N.Y. Yankees 2 Philadelphia Phillies 3, Minnesota Twins 0 Arizona Diamondbacks 6, Kansas City Royals 2 Boston Red Sox 6, Colorado Rockies 0
AMERICAN LEAGUE Cleveland Guardians 5, Detroit Tigers 4 L.A. Angels 5, Seattle Mariners 1 Tampa Bay Rays 4, Toronto Blue Jays 2 Texas Rangers 3, Chicago White Sox 2 Houston Astros 2, Oakland Athletics 8
NATIONAL LEAGUE Cincinnati Reds At Atlanta Braves (PPD) San Diego Padres, 4 Washington Nationals 0 St. Louis Cardinals 2, Pittsburgh Pirates 1 Milwaukee Brewers 1, Chicago Cubs 0 San Francisco Giants 2, Los Angeles Dodgers 5
Simone Biles competes in the uneven bars during the Women’s Day Four of 2024 US Olympic Gymnastics Trials at the Target Center, June 30, 2024, in Minneapolis. (Kerem Yucel/AFP via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — American gymnast Simone Biles is considered by many to be the G.O.A.T — the Greatest Of All Time — and for good reason.
“I’m not the next Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps. I’m the first Simone Biles,” she told reporters at the 2016 Olympics.
Here’s a look at Biles’ historic gymnastics career thus far as she heads to her third Olympic Games, this year in Paris, France:
Most decorated gymnast of all time
Her rise to fame began in the wake of the 2012 Olympics, which Biles was too young to qualify for.
In 2013, at the age of 16, she secured four medals — two golds — in her first appearance at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships.
In 2014, she won four golds and a silver at the competition. In 2015, she scored another four gold medals and a bronze. In 2018, she won four golds, one silver, and one bronze. In 2019, she won five gold medals. In 2023, she won four golds and one silver.
Overall, she’s scored 30 world titles, 23 as a gold medal winner, according to the official Olympics website.
In her first Olympic Games in 2016, Biles won four gold medals and one bronze. In Tokyo, she won one silver and one bronze before sitting out for the rest of the competition to focus on her mental and physical health.
Biles is the most decorated gymnast in history — male or female — according to the Olympics. In all, she has 37 world and Olympic medals combined.
She has five moves named after her
Biles now has five signature moves named after her in three different events: on the floor, on vault, and on the balance beam.
“Many people aren’t even attempting to do them because there’s such high difficulty high risk maneuvers, and she does them with complete ease and effort,” Dominique Dawes, a three-time Olympian and 18-year gymnastics veteran. “It’s amazing to watch what she’s doing. And she does it with a smile on her face.”
For a move to be named after an athlete in gymnastics, the gymnast has to submit a video of them performing the move to the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique Women’s Technical Committee.
The committee determines the difficulty of the skill, and if it receives a high enough difficulty score, it is then eligible to be named.
Then, a gymnast must perform the move without “a major fault” at an international competition.
The “Biles on the floor” — first successfully completed by Biles on the world stage in 2013 at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships — is a double layout with a half-twist, which means that her body remains straight and elongated as she flips twice.
Her second signature move on the floor, “Biles II,” was first successfully completed on the world stage in 2019. For this move, Biles performs a triple-double, meaning she Biles flips twice while twisting three times before hitting the ground.
The Biles on the vault is a round-off, into a back hand-spring with a half turn, completing the move by twisting twice in a somersault. It one of the most difficult vaults in women’s artistic gymnastics, with a difficulty score of 6.4.
Biles II on the vault is the most recent move to be named after the athlete. In 2023, she became the first woman to land the Yurchenko double pike, a move that consists of a backflip off the vault and two full rotations in a pike position before landing.
The Biles on the balance beam, completed in 2019, features a double-double dismount from the beam — two flips and two twists.
Dawes was a gymnast during the old ways of scoring — which is when gymnasts aimed simply for a “perfect 10.” Now, gymnasts are scored on two metrics — the perfect 10 of execution and the open-ended scoring of difficulty that gymnasts have free reign of collecting points on.
Dawes said that with the old way of scoring, there was “no need to push yourself beyond that value.” Now, “sky is the limit” for athletes like Biles.
“It really is Simone versus herself.” Dawes said. “That’s really what makes her one of the greatest of all time … Back then they used to cap our scores. And so now with this new scoring system, the sky is the limit for athletes like Simone, who’s very talented. And so if she does a higher, difficult maneuver on any of the different pieces of apparatus, she’ll actually get credit for it.”
Prioritizing her mental and physical health
Simone Biles pulled out of the Tokyo Olympics before finishing the individual all-around competition and the team final following a shocking stumble on vault.
“We wholeheartedly support Simone’s decision and applaud her bravery in prioritizing her well-being. Her courage shows, yet again, why she is a role model for so many,” USA Gymnastics said in a statement.
Her exit shined a light on mental health among elite athletes who face intense pressures as the world watches. She later also discussed how her exit was tied to her struggle to recover mentally after being sexually abused by former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar.
Biles has also been outspoken about experiencing depression and having to take anxiety medication in the fallout of the Nassar abuse.
“As a recent competitor in the Tokyo Games who was a survivor of this horror, I can assure you the impacts of this man’s abuse are not over or ever forgotten,” Biles said at a 2021 Congressional hearing. “The announcement in the spring of 2020 that the Tokyo Games were to be postponed for a year meant that I would be going to the gym, to training, to therapy, living daily among the reminders of this story for another 365 days.”
Biles qualified in all six of the women’s gymnastics finals at the Tokyo Olympics and was expected to win an unprecedented six gold medals. The goal was to become the first woman since 1968 to win back-to-back titles in the all-around.
“I just never felt like this going into a competition before,” Biles said at a press conference Tuesday following the team final. “I tried to go out here and have fun, and warm up in the back went a little bit better, but once I came out here I was like, ‘No, mental is not there.’”
“It’s been really stressful this Olympic Games, just as a whole,” said Biles to reporters at the time. “It’s been a long week. It’s been a long Olympic process. It’s been a long year.”
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Monday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
AMERICAN LEAGUE N.Y. Yankees 9, Tampa Bay Rays 1 Detroit Tigers 8, Cleveland Guardians 2 Texas Rangers 4, Chicago White Sox 3 Oakland Athletics 4, Houston Astros 0 Los Angeles Angels 3, Seattle Mariners 1
NATIONAL LEAGUE Pittsburgh Pirates 2, St. Louis Cardinals 1 Final N.Y. Mets 6, Miami Marlins 4 Final Cincinnati Reds 4, Atlanta Braves 1 Final Chicago Cubs 3, Milwaukee Brewers 1 San Francisco Giants 2, Los Angeles Dodgers 3
INTERLEAGUE Minnesota Twins 7, Philadelphia Phillies 2 Kansas City Royals 10, Arizona Diamondbacks 4 Boston Red Sox 8, Colorado Rockies 9
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Sunday’s sports events
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE San Diego 2, Cleveland 1 Minnesota 7, Milwaukee 8 Boston 6, LA Dodgers 9
AMERICAN LEAGUE Baltimore 2, Texas 3 Chicago White Sox 1, Kansas City 4 Detroit 4, Toronto 5 NY Yankees 4, Tampa Bay 6
NATIONAL LEAGUE San Francisco 3, Colorado 2 Arizona 1, Chicago Cubs 2 NY Mets 2, Miami 4 St Louis 6, Atlanta 2 Philadelphia 6, Pittsburgh 0 Cincinnati 2, Washington 5
