Gold again: U.S. women’s gymnastics team dominates in Rio
RIO DE JANEIRO — Who would have thought that the one crying would be a crusty Romanian-born coach, self-described as “very tough,” and not any of her five winsome U.S. Olympic gymnasts?
Gold has a way of overturning conventional wisdom.
Simone Biles, Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas, Laurie Hernandez and Madison Kocian gave a teary-eyed national team coordinator Martha Karolyi the ultimate retirement present by winning the Olympic women’s gymnastics team event Tuesday.
Call it a two-peat for the London gold medalists. The women beat Russia by a stunning 8.2 points, bettering the five points of four years ago. China also landed on the podium with a bronze-medal effort.
It is the first time a country has won women’s team titles back-toback at the Olympics since Romania did so in 2000 and 2004.
“Coming out in this arena, it feels like you’re in a movie or some insane amazing dream,” said Raisman, a member of the 2012 team.
Raisman and Douglas were the two returnees from London. The rookies were Hernandez, Biles and Kocian. Hernandez set the tone with a strong vault (15.100) as the first competitor on the opening rotation. Starting strong is no small thing as shown by the U.S. men in the team final when it had mistakes on the first two routines.
Ten of the team’s 12 routines — the women compete on four apparatuses — received scores of 15.000 or better.
The United States led by less than a point after one rotation and expanded its lead to 4.026 points after Russia suffered through a messy balance beam effort and was passed by China.
Kocian, the uneven bars specialist, did her job on the second rotation on the bars, getting a score of 15.933. Hernandez, Raisman and Biles were in the floor exercise for the fourth and final rotation. It turned almost into an intramural meet between the three with the gold all but decided. Hernandez wowed the crowd with her catchy and appealing routine, scoring 14.833. Raisman soared high and topped it — receiving a score of 15.366 — and had the crowd chanting, “USA, USA, USA.”