Team USA Announces Best Gymnastics Team to Ever Head to an Olympics
SAN JOSE — Choosing the women talented enough to make the Olympics team, Martha Karolyi, the women’s national team coordinator, cried while announcing the brave women who will represent the USA in Brazil.
According to The New York Times, at the United States Olympic women’s gymnastics trials, tears were shed.
Tears from gymnasts who made the team. Tears from gymnasts who didn’t. Tears even from Martha Karolyi, the normally stoic women’s national team coordinator, who at the end of the trials on Sunday night had no choice but to crush the hearts and hopes of the gymnasts who weren’t among those five women she had chosen to represent the United States at the Rio Games.
The U.S. Olympic Team Trials for women’s gymnastics, held for two days, on Friday, July 8 and Sunday, July 10 at the SAP Center at San Jose, is the event that determined who was given the chance to follow their dreams and represent their country.
After two nights of fierce competition in San Jose, California, ABC reported, the U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Team has finally been named. Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas, Aly Raisman, Laurie Hernandez and Madison Kocian will be swinging, jumping and flipping in Rio to defend the USA’s gold medal title.
Biles is a three-time, all-around world champion and is considered by many to be the “greatest female gymnast ever,” according to the Team USA website. In three years, Biles has won 14 world championship medals, 10 of which were gold, putting her at the top of the list for any U.S. athlete in history. At qualifications, Biles won the all-around, earning herself the only automatic qualification spot.
Douglas began making history in 2012, when she became the first U.S. athlete to win both team and all-around gold medals at the London Olympics. She was also the first black gymnast to win an individual gold medal. Douglas has the potential to be a surprise all-around final competitor and medalist, according to the team’s site.
Like Douglas, Raisman, too, was a competitor in the 2012 Olympics in London, from which she returned as the most decorated U.S. gymnast, with a gold on floor exercise, a bronze on the balance beam and having contributed to the team gold. Raisman returns at Rio after taking a break following the London Games.
As the youngest member of the team, Hernandez is also the only first-year, senior-level gymnast. But she’s already making history. Hernandez is the first Puerto Rican woman to make a U.S. Olympic Gymnastics Team. At qualifications, she finished second to Biles in the all-around and won balance beam.
Kocian is an uneven bars specialist and the only event specialist on the team. In 2015, she won the uneven bars world title in a four-way tie for gold. Despite her area of expertise, Kocian is expected to contribute to the other events as well.
Following the second night of competition, once the new team was named, the novel teammates were left without many words to say and many heartfelt tears.
“I don’t think there’s a good enough word to describe the feeling besides … happier than happy and relieved,” Biles said, according to the Mercury News.
Biles nailed near-perfect vaults twice at SAP Center. Her 16.2 score Sunday was the highest of any individual event, which has become a trend in recent weeks after earning top scores on vault, balance beam and the floor exercise at the P&G Championships.
Only 16-year-old Laurie Hernandez, according to ESPN, the shimmering newcomer of the bunch who has a chance to be a scene-stealing star in Rio, seemed immune to the tears at first, laughing and asking Raisman and Biles, “Should I be crying, too?”
And Douglas? She said she felt both relieved and invigorated by the news.
“I can’t wait to get back in the gym,” she said. “I wasn’t as sharp as I wanted to be — but that is going to change. Because I am so determined. And I totally believe more is in me.”
Karolyi said “it didn’t help” Douglas when she fell both Friday and Sunday off the balance beam, and performed a lackluster floor exercise Sunday night.
Raisman, who has been through this before and knows how it goes, said, “Just making the team is just so incredibly hard to do. But it’s almost like the job is just beginning, too, and it’s just getting more intense from here. It’s exciting, but now you turn the page and focus on the next job, which is Rio.”
