The Team USA gymnasts started strong, but both had difficulty landing their jumps
Simone Biles and Suni Lee had a tough time on the balance beam Monday.
In the penultimate women’s gymnastics event of the 2024 Paris Olympics, Biles and Lee both fell off the apparatus during the balance beam final, ending in 5th and 6th place, respectively. Italy’s Alice D’Amato won gold and teammate Manila Esposito took bronze, while China’s Yaqin Zhou earned silver.
Lee was second to go, and started strong before fumbling a landing on one of her flips. She stumbled backwards, before landing with her legs on either side of the bar and falling off. Lee got back on and finished her routine, ending with a score of 13.100.
Biles was seventh of the eight gymnasts to go, and in between her and Lee all but one of their competitors also fell off the beam. Biles, like Lee, looked solid, but after one of her flips Biles landed with too much power and fell off the beam. She got back on and finished out with her classic dismount, but after a long delay, the judges also gave Biles a 13.100, putting her in fifth place.
Biles and Lee had both gone into the beam final hoping to improve upon their past Olympic performances on the apparatus. Biles won bronze in beam at the 2016 Rio and 2020 Tokyo Games, while Lee finished fifth in the event in Tokyo.
Lee was “disappointed” with her beam final, but chipper while talking to reporters, including PEOPLE, after the event.
“I would say it definitely didn’t go how I wanted it to,” she said. “I don’t even know what happened in my series. I thought it was straight on and then all of a sudden I was on the ground.
“I’m just really disappointed because I feel like I have so much more to prove on beam, and every single time I get to the final, I can just never do the routine that I want to do, but that’s just the mental side of it. So I just need to go and do the work and put all the effort in and maybe one day you’ll have it.”
Lee added that after nine days of competition, which includes winning bronze in uneven bars the day prior, she was “so tired today.”
“I was telling everyone like, I don’t know if I can do this beam final,” she said. “I’m so tired and then I felt like I hadn’t done beam in a while just because I can’t keep track of my days while I’ve been here. But the pressure was definitely on today.”
Earlier in these Paris Games, Biles, Lee and their teammates — Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey and Hezly Rivera — won the gold medal in the women’s team final. Biles earned gold in the women’s all-around and Lee took the bronze medal on Aug. 1. Two days later, Biles secured her third gold in Paris in the vault final.
While she keeps racking up medals and breaking records, Biles said after the team final that she’s not keeping close attention to the numbers.
“I don’t keep count, I don’t keep stats,” she told reporters, including PEOPLE. “I just go out here and do what I’m supposed to and I’m doing what I love and enjoying it, so that’s really all that matters to me.”
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