America thwarts Romania’s comeback in women’s gymnastics

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It has been 18 years since elite gymnastics adopted its open-ended scoring system, an adaptation introduced not a moment too soon, as it would be rather boring to watch Simone Biles score repeated perfect 10s over nine years of international competitions across little more than a decade. At her third consecutive Olympic Summer Games, Biles earned two individual gold medals and a silver medal on floor and cemented yet another gold for Team USA. Pushing 30 years old with no sign of peaking, Biles, now widely regarded as the greatest in the sport of all time, has transformed the sport with her sheer escalation of difficulty and entrenched America’s dominance not just in competition but also in judging.

The star-studded stands in Paris also saw the shadow of what once ruled the sport. Nadia Comaneci, the legendary Romanian who scored the first perfect 10 at the 1976 Games, has lived in America since escaping her then-communist homeland as a young woman, marrying an American, and becoming a citizen. But despite her stateside status as an international celebrity and philanthropist, Comaneci was in Paris as champion of Romania’s attempt to restore its former glory.

Team USA from left to right, Jade Carey, Suni Lee, Simone Biles, Jordan Chiles and Hezly Rivera celebrate after winning the gold medal during the women’s artistic gymnastics team finals round of the 2024 Summer Olympics on July 30 in Paris. (Charlie Riedel/AP) Starting with Comaneci’s explosion to stardom, Romania once reigned supreme over the sport in tandem with its Eastern Bloc neighbor of the Soviet Union, medaling in the team all-arounds at every Summer Olympics from 1976 to 2012 except for three. But as women’s artistic gymnastics has pivoted toward an emphasis on acrobatic difficulty and arguably away from, well, artistry, the Romanian obsession with precision and execution has fallen out of style next to Americans like Biles seemingly defying gravity.

After over a decade in the wilderness, Romania seemed almost set for a comeback, sending its first WAG team since 2012 to the Olympics. Though the team as a whole couldn’t compete with the West’s stranglehold over the early days of competition, Romania seemed slated to win on its final day, with two of its athletes tied in third place for floor. With her higher execution score breaking the tie, Ana Barbosu began to celebrate when the final competitor of the day, the United States’s Jordan Chiles, came in fifth.

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And yet, America won anyway. Appealing a judgment that her incomplete Gogean was not actually incomplete, Chiles won, leapfrogging not just Barbosu but also Sabrina Voinea, who, as it turns out, was docked points for stepping out of bounds when she did not. Comaneci rallied Romanians not just in Paris but also online to challenge the decision, with the country now challenging the results and its prime minister pledging to boycott the closing ceremonies if Voinea is not given her bronze.

What’s the truth? Chiles, never an excellent dancer like Biles, let alone Comaneci, probably didn’t complete her tour jete, and Voinea landed a routine of much greater difficulty with little obvious error. But the Eastern Bloc has fallen for good, and with it, its gymnastics tradition. The American style, ruthless in both athletic performance and its capture of rank-making and rank-breaking, is now in vogue.

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