Article 5MMEP Tokyo Olympics gymnastics: ROC end US reign as Simone Biles pulls out of women’s team all-around – live!

Tokyo Olympics gymnastics: ROC end US reign as Simone Biles pulls out of women’s team all-around – live!

by
Bryan Armen Graham
from on (#5MMEP)

3.50pm BST

At a press conference with all four members of the US team, Biles confirmed her decision to withdraw was not due to physical injury. Instead, the four-time Olympic champion said that she was concerned the stress she was enduring was compromising her team's medal chances.

No injury, thankfully," Biles said. And that's why I took a step back, because I didn't want to do something silly out there and get injured. So I thought it was best if these girls took over and did the rest of the job, which they absolutely did. They're Olympic silver medalists now. And they should be really proud of themselves for how well they did last minute having to go in on it. It's been really stressful, this Olympic games, I think just as a whole, not having an audience, there are a lot of different variables going into it. It's been a long week. It's been a long Olympic process. It's been a long year. So just a lot of different variables and I think we're just a little bit too stressed out. We should be out here having fun and sometimes that's not the case."

3.20pm BST

We still can't believe it's happening," said Angelina Melnikova, whose floor exercise sealed the gold for the ROC. The impossible is possible now. Of course are very happy.

We worked extremely hard, we were basically in a closed training camp for a year and a half, working for this moment."

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