It was a golden moment in the pool for American swimmer Lilly King, right, who won the gold medal in the women’s 100m breaststroke on Monday.
Ryan Murphy of the U.S. also won gold, in the men’s backstroke.
RIO DE JANEIRO — Anything can happen, of course, but entering the Olympic women’s team finals Tuesday afternoon, the women of USA Gymnastics — Simone Biles, Gabrielle Douglas, Laurie Hernandez, Madison Kocian and Aly Raisman — are their generation’s Dream Team.
In gymnastics, they’re the Wrecking Crew, the Legion of Doom, the Fab Five, the Monsters of the Midway, America’s Team, the Broad Street Bullies.
They’re the 1927 Yankees, the 1971 Dolphins, the 1995-96 Bulls, the 2008-09 Connecticut Huskies, the 1997-2000 Comets.
Heck, they might even be the 1985 Chicago Bears, which to head coach Aimee Boorman, a North Sider whose grandfather had Bears season tickets when George Halas’ teams played at Wrigley Field, is such an aweinspiring possibility she can’t bear, pun intended, to make the comparison.
“Oh. Wow. You’re gonna make me choose ???? ” Boorman said on Twitter when asked to compare the dominance of her favorite gymnastics squad and her favorite football team. “I can’t do it.”
Time was that gymnastics events were decided by tenths of
points, as in the Magnificent Seven’s 1996 victory. By 2012, under a different scoring system, the Fierce Five won by five points.
Based on their qualifying scores Sunday, the as-yet publicly unnamed 2016 team — Grandmistress Simone and the Furious Five? Simone and the Supremes? Glams Squad? Martha’s Final Five? Phi Breaka Beam? — could win Tuesday’s team final by 10 points.
Their routines are tougher — based on difficulty scores from Sunday, they will have a 2.3-point edge over China, 3.3 points over Russia and 8.8 points over Brazil, whose boisterous fans were much in evidence as the Brazilian women qualified in the session before the U.S. team competed.
“It’s going to be really difficult,” Russian gymnast Aliya Mustafina said this week of facing the U.S. women. “They are unbeatable at the moment.”
And the Americans do their routines better, too. Not including vault, the U.S. women had six events Sunday in which their execution score was higher than 8.9 on a 10-point scale. The other 11 teams combined for three.
“It wasn’t 100 percent perfect, but we showed our gymnastics is on the highest level,” national team coordinator Martha Karolyi said after Sunday’s qualifying round. “I always tell the girls, we’re competing against ourselves. We don’t want to beat this (country) or that.
“We want to come as close to perfection as possible. I expected consistency and that’s what they did. Every single routine. That’s what we’ve trained for.”
If that sounds ruthlessly bloodless, it shouldn’t. The group hug the team enjoyed after Biles, 19, of Spring, capped the afternoon with the best balance beam routine of the day indicated the expectations that each faces on the Olympic stage, and the relief associated with results such as Sunday’s performances.
“I don’t think you feel pressure when your teammates hit,” Biles said. “You’re confident that you’re the next one and you can do it. It sets a rhythm … ‘You know what, I’ve got this now.’ ”
Regardless of the outcome, Tuesday will mark an end of an era as Martha Karolyi, who along with husband, Bela Karolyi, have transformed the sport in the United States since the early 1980s, retires after serving as national team coordinator since 2001.
“I am living every single routine,” she said. “I’m so excited and so proud of these girls.”
The beat will go on, though. Just as 2013 brought the rise of Simone Biles and the next four years brought the return of Raisman and Douglas,
Hernandez is only 16 and could become the face of USA Gymnastics in the next few years, presuming Biles steps away from the sport to attend college.
Boorman doesn’t rule out the fact the best might be yet to come.
“We train awesome,” she said. “We have great coaches and a great national team staff that helps the coaches bring up new generations.
“The team after us probably will be even better.”