Gymnastics

Simone Biles simultaneously put on a fashion show and gave herself a workout at the Met Gala on Monday night.

The seven-time Olympic medalist selected a gown that weighs 98 pounds for her ensemble:

Simone Biles's crystal-embellished #MetGala gown? It weighs 98 pounds, the designers told The New York Times. https://t.co/UnDxbgXCPe pic.twitter.com/3zEe6sQLRK

— The New York Times (@nytimes) September 14, 2021

According to the New York Times' Jessica Testa, the gown included "more than 17,000 feet of Swarovski glass crystal chains and nearly 200 feet of tulle." It also required around 6,650 person-hours to complete.

It was certainly a piece befitting the current queen of women's gymnastics, though it may not be Biles' best design choice this year. That title arguably continues to reside with the bedazzled goat leotard she sported at the U.S. Gymnastics Championships.

Talk about making an entrance.

Former UCLA gymnast Nia Dennis unleashed a floor routine at the Met Gala on Monday night that included flips on the stairs of the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

Former UCLA gymnast Nia Dennis did a whole floor routine at the Met Gala 🔥

(via @voguemagazine)pic.twitter.com/ebQYuIp9Ua

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) September 13, 2021

Michelle Ruiz of Vogue noted she was accompanied by Brooklyn United Marching Band and said "I feel like Superwoman."

Ruiz also pointed out Dennis is "best known for her groundbreaking Beyonce and Black Lives Matter-themed floor routines while a student at UCLA."

Her career highlights at UCLA include a 2019 First-Team All-American recognition on bars, a 2018 NCAA team championship and seven All-Pac-12 honors.

Tokyo Olympics gold medalist Sunisa "Suni" Lee, WWE wrestler Mike "The Miz" Mizanin and NBA guard Iman Shumpert were announced Wednesday as part of the newest Dancing with the Stars cast.

Season 30 of DWTS is scheduled to premiere Sept. 20 on ABC.

Lee won the gold medal in the women's all-around gymnastic competition at the 2021 Summer Games. She also captured silver with her U.S. teammates in the team competition and bronze in the uneven bars.

The 18-year-old Minnesota native is set to join the Auburn University gymnastics team, and she told Justin Lee of the Opelika-Auburn News she had to check the Dancing with the Stars dates to make sure she wouldn't miss her first Iron Bowl when the Tigers battle rival Alabama on Nov. 27.

"The last show is on the 22nd. I had to make sure," she said with a laugh. "I was like, 'Phew.'"

Lee added it's a unique chance following the Olympics, and appearing on the popular show will give her even greater visibility to build her personal brand during his college years given the new name, image and likeness (NIL) rules.

"I'm so excited," the Hmong American said. "It's really cool that I get this opportunity. Not many people, even celebrities, get to do this. It's really cool that I get to be a part of something like this, especially after coming off the Olympics, and multiple Olympians have done this in the past, too. I'm like following behind their footsteps a little bit."

The Miz, 40, has long used the moniker "The A-Lister" as part of his with his showy, egotistical gimmick, which has been accompanied by several acting roles and a reality show, Miz & Mrs, alongside his wife and former WWE Superstar Maryse Mizanin.

Now he'll get an opportunity to take the gimmick mainstream on DWTS.

"The next title I'm after? The Mirror Ball Trophy!" The Miz told WWE's official website.

Shumpert is currently a free agent after 10 NBA seasons with the New York Knicks, Cleveland Cavaliers, Sacramento Kings, Houston Rockets and Brooklyn Nets. The 31-year-old guard has averaged 7.2 points and 3.3 rebounds across 461 career games.

The 6'5" Georgia Tech product won an NBA title with the Cavs in 2016.

Simone Biles enlisted the help of NBC's Today to give a surprise gift to Suni Lee's father Wednesday. 

Per Scott Stump of Today.com, the gymnast was inspired to get John Lee a new wheelchair after seeing her teammate Suni present him with her Olympic gold medal on the morning show last month.

Olympic gold medalist Suni Lee’s heartwarming reunion with her family on our plaza after the Tokyo Olympics inspired Simone Biles to ask TODAY’s help in coming up with a big surprise for Suni’s dad, John, who was paralyzed two years ago. @NMoralesNBC has the details. pic.twitter.com/kXcA3FQsJa

— TODAY (@TODAYshow) September 1, 2021

"Hi, Mr. Lee, it's Simone. I love your daughter, Suni, so much and I know how much she loves you," Biles said in a video message. "You have done so much for her, so I reached out to my friends at the Today show to see if we could do something special for you. Hope you like it."

John Lee was paralyzed from the waist down in 2019 after falling off a ladder while helping a friend trim a tree.

The accident occurred days before Suni was scheduled to take part in the USA Gymnastics National Championships. She remained in the competition, winning gold in the uneven bars, silver in the individual all-around and bronze in the floor exercise.

Lee won three medals at the Tokyo Games: gold in the individual all-around, silver in the team final and bronze in the uneven bars. The 18-year-old joined Biles, Mary Lou Retton, Carly Patterson, Nastia Liukin and Gabby Douglas as American women to win the all-around gold.

USA Gymnastics has reached a settlement agreement with the survivors of Larry Nassar as well as those sexually abused by others in power at the organization. According to USA Today's Nancy Armour, the $425 million proposal still requires full approval from survivors and creditors.

The agreement was filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Indiana on Tuesday.

“After extensive discussions, this plan has been jointly proposed by USA Gymnastics and the Committee, and it is supported by many of the involved insurers,” USA Gymnastics said in a statement. “We anticipate that this plan will be confirmed later this year and greatly appreciate all parties’ efforts to get to this point.”

The offer is nearly double the $215 million USA Gymnastics presented in January 2020, however, Armour noted it's unclear just how much each survivor would see from that sum. The agreement would also be subject to additional debts the company incurred when filing for bankruptcy in 2018. Accepting the offer would end litigation against USA Gymnastics, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee and Bela and Martha Karolyi.

The initial offer faced immense criticism because of its relatively low total and the ability of the USOPC to be released from lawsuits with minimal financial responsibility. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robyn Moberly was among those who knocked the proposal saying the third parties should be held more financially liable. 

"It isn't news to anybody on this phone call, nor is it news to me, that the U.S. Olympic Committee needs to be an active participant, and I mean beyond just throwing in their insurance coverage in this,"  Moberly said on a February 2020 call, according to Armour.

Nassar survivors previously agreed to a $500 million settlement with Michigan State University in 2018. 

The former team doctor for the U.S Women's National Gymnastics team was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison for child pornography and tampering with evidence, 40 to 175 years in the state of Michigan for sexual assault of minors and an additional 40 to 125 years in prison for sexual assault. He was imprisoned in 2018 without parole.  

U.S. Olympics gymnastics star Simone Biles said she was bitten by a dog this week and had to receive a tetanus shot. 

In an Instagram story post on Friday, Biles shared photos of a wound on her finger and recounted the incident. 

"I've grown up my whole life with german shepherds and never got bit," Biles wrote (h/t Gabrielle Chung of People Magazine). "This dog at the farm just said not today."

The 24-year-old didn't appear too concerned by the injury in the video and followed up with posts showing her back in leotards and hanging out with friends. A native of Spring, Texas, just outside Houston, Biles is back home after competing in the Tokyo Olympics where she claimed a bronze medal on the balance beam and a silver in the all-around team event. 

The latter became a defining moment in Biles' career as she withdrew from competition after experiencing the "twisties," allowing her teammates to step in and help ensure the United States reached the podium while she focused on her mental health. 

"I say put mental health first," Biles said afterwards. "Because if you don't, then you're not going to enjoy your sport and you're not going to succeed as much as you want to. So it's OK sometimes to even sit out the big competitions to focus on yourself, because it shows how strong of a competitor and person that you really are—rather than just battle through it."

Gone are the days when women were an afterthought at the Olympics. 

In Tokyo, they're actually doing better than men. According to The Representation Project's "Respect Her Game" report (h/t Lindsay Gibbs), women got nearly 60 percent of prime-time NBC Olympics coverage in Tokyo, an astronomical figure in comparison to the oft-quoted four percent of media coverage devoted to women's sports during the rest of the quadrennium. And for Team USA, women are beating their male counterparts in the medal count.

These victories are no doubt a result of an increase in investment in gender parity at the Olympics. The Tokyo Olympics were likely the most balanced ever in terms of opportunities for women. The IOC patted itself on the back in a recent press release touting the "innovation and greater gender diversity" that the 18 mixed events were bringing to the Games. And they have a point—mixed events like the 4x400-meter relay in track were well received in Tokyo and bring attention to women athletes. 

Mixed events, though, do nothing to fix the disparity in medal opportunities that still exists in 2021. Women still compete for 27 fewer Olympic medals than men, or nine fewer events, according to USA Today. The gap is more egregious when one considers that for Olympic athletes, medals often mean money. And the worst offender, gymnastics, could learn a lot from track and swimming, the other two sports that take up much of the spotlight during the Olympics.

"Women were the weaker sex and because men were stronger people, they could last the distance." That was the thinking back when Olympic swimmer Debbie Meyer competed in the 1960s, she told The New York Times. As of this year, swimming is no longer part of the medal disparity problem—in Tokyo, men and women finally had the same opportunities with the addition of the 1500-meter freestyle, after initially achieving equity in the number of events in 1996. 

But it was a long time coming, and track and field still has yet to get there. Women still don't have the same number of events in track, as they don't compete in the 50-kilometer walk. But track and field has made a lot of progress over the past few decades, finally adding the women's marathon in 1984, triple jump in 1996 and pole vault in 2000. It last added a women's event in 2008 with the 3,000-meter steeplechase.

Equity will likely be achieved at the next Olympics, where the IOC opted to not hold the men's 50-kilometer walk in order to create gender parity. Needless to say, creating equal opportunities by eliminating men's events is an odd choice, though the IOC also stated that a mixed event will be added.

Women's gymnastics, however, is the least equitable of the three. There, men have two more event finals than women, or six more medals, and it's been that way since 1960. At those Olympics, it seems, the format was set in stone, and it's unclear why, or why women stopped competing on the still rings at all. Speculation abounds that it was because of archaic notions of what a woman's body was meant to do compared to a man's. 

While women do compete in men's events at the local level, the format stuck for elite competitions, and at this point, it would be very difficult to change it. Each event requires a specific skill level—a balance beam specialist can't learn still rings in the same way, for example, that a 400-meter runner can train for the 200-meter dash. 

Still, dramatic changes have been made to the sport in the past. The uneven bars started moving further apart in the 1970s to make space for more complex skills. Compulsory rounds were eliminated after 1996. And in 2006, the scoring system was completely overhauled in an effort to reward difficulty. Plus, gymnasts who are adept on one apparatus are already compelled to improve on others in order to become more competitive at the elite level—that's nothing new.

But in terms of the level of opportunity for all gymnasts, the sport has actually moved backwards. For this quadrennium, the International Gymnastics Federation kept the same number of events but removed three medals per gender by reducing the team size to four. The five-person team will thankfully return in 2024, but it was one step backwards, one step forwards. 

Where should the extra medals come from? Rather than eliminate men's events, as the IOC did with track and field, equity could be achieved by adding two more medal opportunities for women, as happened with swimming in Tokyo. Events like rings, parallel bars or pommel horse could be added as individual events and allowed to gradually increase in popularity before they're added to the team final.

Another possibility, though one that wouldn't solve the parity problem, is adding a mixed event. Track and swimming have both shown that mixed events can be successful, and it would be a good addition to gymnastics, rewarding countries that have more balanced programs. Mixed events already exist in gymnastics, but they're contested at smaller, lesser-known meets than World Championships or World Cups, and an event like this would likely need to be added to the World Championships in order to be considered for the Olympics.

For a sport that's been set in its ways for more than half a century, it's wishful thinking. But for all the ground women have gained in the past 60 years, it's odd that medal parity still isn't there. Swimming and track have achieved it, and for gymnastics, maybe it's time to switch things up a bit.

Houston Texans safety Jonathan Owens, who is dating Simone Biles, said he was "sick" when she had to withdraw from multiple Olympic events to focus on her mental health. 

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Owens opened up about what he knew of the situation with Biles:

I was sick for her, just because I can see her face, I kind of know her facial expressions, I can kind of read her lips and kind of know what was going on and kind of what she was telling her coach. I kind of already knew what was going on beforehand so I was just really hoping she was going to get over it and be able to go out there and perform. So I was sick to my stomach because she wasn't able to go out there.

Biles was scheduled to compete in six finals at the Tokyo Games, including the team final and five individual events. 

After struggling during the first rotation in the team final, Biles announced she was withdrawing from the event because of the emotional stress she was feeling. 

"Physically, I feel good. I'm in shape," Biles told Hoda Kotb on NBC's TODAY show (h/t Elisha Fieldstadt of NBC News). "Emotionally, it varies on the time and moment. Coming to the Olympics and being head star isn't an easy feat."  

Biles eventually pulled out of the finals for the individual all-around, vault, uneven bars and floor routine. The 24-year-old posted a video on Instagram last week of her in practice attempting to do a routine on the uneven bars, but she was unable to land properly:

.@Simone_Biles shared footage of herself at practice in #Tokyo this morning via Instagram, still struggling to find herself in the air.

The 🐐 also took the time to further communicate the severity of her condition to the world. pic.twitter.com/xULcvS7s4F

— Gymnastics Now (@Gymnastics_Now) July 30, 2021

Biles was able to return for the balance beam final on Tuesday. She won bronze in the event, marking her second consecutive Olympic medal on the balance beam.

It was also her seventh career Olympic medal, tying Shannon Miller for the most all-time by a United States female gymnast. 

Owens and Biles went public with their relationship in August 2020. He is entering his third season with the Texans after going undrafted out of Missouri Western in 2018. 

Team USA added more gold to its Tokyo Olympics haul, bringing their overall count to 59 (and counting) following the ninth day of competition.

That total is good enough for the overall lead, but America still trails China by four gold medals, despite adding to its total in swimming and golf.

Inspirational and emotional performances by female athletes MyKayla Skinner and Yulimar Rojas, and a historic showing by American golfer Xander Schauffele, dominated Sunday's highlights.

    

Tokyo Olympic Medal Standings Following Day 9

1. China: 24 gold, 51 overall
2. United States: 20 gold, 59 overall
3. Japan: 17 gold, 31 overall
4. Australia: 14 gold, 31 overall
5. ROC: 12 gold, 44 overall
6. Great Britain: 10 gold, 32 overall
7. France: 5 gold, 21 overall
8. Republic of Korea: 5 gold, 17 overall
9. Italy: 4 gold, 27 overall
10. Netherlands: 4 gold, 17 overall

Complete standings are available at Olympics.com

     

MyKayla Skinner Medals as Olympic Career Concludes

Less than a week after failing to qualify for any finals event, MyKayla Skinner put on her competition unitard one last time, replacing Simone Biles in the vault finals. She made the most of the opportunity, taking home the silver medal.

Looks like I get to put a competition Leo on just one more time. Can’t wait to compete in vault finals. Doing this for us @Simone_Biles ❤️ It’s go time baby!

— MyKayla Skinner (Harmer) (@mykaylaskinner) July 31, 2021

Ready to head home after the disappointment of July 25, she stepped in to replace Biles in Sunday's competition and now leaves Tokyo with an elusive medal.

An alternate in 2016, she watched from the stands while her teammates celebrated gold. When she was deemed ineligible to compete due both to Olympic rules and the fact that Biles and Jade Carey had qualified ahead of her, it appeared as though her career on the international stage would end not with a bang, but a whimper.

She stuck around, though, and trained with Biles. When the, arguably, greatest gymnast of all time pulled out of the vault finals, she stepped in. Now, she is an Olympic medalist.

Delivered big time.

A message from vault silver medalist @mykaylaskinner. ♥️ #TokyoOlympics pic.twitter.com/SM8Udc5Hay

— Team USA (@TeamUSA) August 1, 2021

"I think it's so cool to show that age is just a number, and that anything is possible if you work hard and dream for it," Skinner told the Associated Press in reference to her age (24) and the resiliency she showed throughout her run.

Now, it's time for Skinner to look toward life beyond competing. "It's time for me to move on with life. I'm ready."

Brazil's Rebeca Andrade earned the gold medal in the event, while Yeo Seojeong of South Korea earned the bronze.

American Suni Lee added to the gymnastic team's Olympic medal count with a bronze in the uneven bars.

     

Venezuela's Yulimar Rojas Obliterates Triple Jump Record

Olympic history was made Sunday as Yulimar Rojas of Venezuela set a world record in the triple jump at 15.76 meters. The previous record, 15.50m set by Ukraine's Inessa Yavets, stood for 26 years.

Venezuela’s Yulimar Rojas sets a world record in the women’s triple jump 🔥

Her reaction was priceless

(via @NBCOlympics) pic.twitter.com/oox2fgRIVp

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) August 1, 2021

It was not particularly close.

Rojas is the first Venezuelan woman to capture Olympic gold, magnifying the accomplishment. Hers is only the fourth gold medal in Venezuelan Olympic history.

"When I woke up this morning, I already knew today was going to be a good day," she said after the historic moment (h/t ESPN). "I knew. I already knew. I knew from the run. I knew I couldn't miss that one. I knew it was right there. I didn't even have to look. My head, my heart, my body."

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No - it's #YulimarRojas pic.twitter.com/DJgBOunnNX

— catherine shipton 💙🇺🇦 🇮🇪 she/her (@cathship27) August 1, 2021

Rojas was no stranger to international competition entering the games. She was a silver medalist in the 2016 games and won consecutive world championships. Now, she leaves Tokyo the undisputed best triple jumper and Olympic gold medalist.

   

Xander Schauffele Earns First American Gold in Golf Since 1904

For the first time in 117 years, America has a gold medal in golf after Xander Schauffele sank two critical putts to earn him victory.

WHAT. A .SHOT.@XSchauffele sticks it close on 18 - he'll putt for par and the gold medal 🥇#TokyoOlympics pic.twitter.com/Zk51SBQU0C

— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) August 1, 2021

Not because American golf has been lackluster for that period of time but, rather, because the competition disappeared from the games after the 1904 games and did not return until 2016 in Rio. 

Schauffele spent his professional career chasing a major, only for them to repeatedly elude him.

More satisfying than a green jacket or trophy was the medal, which not only reflects his dedication to the game but also serves as a tribute to his father, who chased a medal but saw his career cut short by an accident that cost him an eye.

My dad's dream of becoming an Olympic decathlete came to a sudden end in 1986 when a drunk driver crashed into his car. You can read more about his journey and why it means a lot for me to be here in Tokyo with him: https://t.co/k2LEV2Csta #Tokyo2020 @StefanSchauffe1 pic.twitter.com/yXHUajje8h

— Xander Schauffele (@XSchauffele) July 28, 2021

"And with my dad, he dedicated a big chunk of his life for quite some time to obtaining a medal, and that was taken away from him. ... It was more than just golf for me. And I’m just really, really happy and fortunate to be sitting here," he said after his monumental win, per AP.

Schauffele earned the medal despite a crowded field in which nine players still had a shot at the prize on the 18th hole.