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TOKYO — In a night of unexpected joy mixed with unexpected disappointment, Rebeca Andrade, a gymnast from Brazil, kept her gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics on Sunday and wondered if it was real.
And Sunisa Lee of the USA, who won the all-around women’s gymnastics competition last week, looked at her performance in the ragged bars on Sunday and regretted that it was indeed real.
From a family of eight children whose mother worked as a maid, Andrade had won Brazil’s first gold medal in women’s gymnastics. He did so just one month after qualifying for these Games individually, after competing here without the Brazilian team and having had three surgeries in the past six years on his right knee for a torn anterior cruciate ligament.
And Andrade, now celebrated as a hero in Brazil, has accomplished more at these Olympics than he ever imagined – or indeed in his career. He has a gold medal in the vault to add to his all-around silver medal last week. She said that although she had considered retiring many times due to her injuries, the pain was worth it nonetheless, especially as she became a role model for Black girls and women in her country.
“I really don’t know what to say,” Andrade said in a dazed voice. “I can’t imagine myself on the podium.”
American MyKayla Skinner won the silver medal on vault and Yeo Seo-jeong won the bronze medal for South Korea to become that country’s first medal in women’s gymnastics. Their appearance on the podium surprised both of them.
For Skinner, even being at these Games was a surprise, and competing in Sunday’s final was an even bigger surprise.
Skinner, who was an alternative at the Rio Olympics and cried every night watching his teammates struggle, was hospitalized in January due to pneumonia while battling Kovid-19. He missed a month’s practice but still made the USA team event experts at the vault last month.
In Tokyo, he initially did not qualify for the final after finishing fourth overall in the preliminary round, as he was so close to his life’s goal of winning an Olympic medal. Simone Biles and Jade Carey finished ahead of her, and a country can only send two gymnasts to each final.
“For now, I will just try to fill the void in my heart,” she wrote on Instagram. And she started packing her bags to fly home.
But USA Gymnastics told him to wait. Biles, four-time Olympic champion, citing a mental health issue, withdrew from the team final and his status was uncertain for the remainder of the Games. The day before the vault finale, Biles withdrew, allowing Skinner to take his place as the second American at that event.
The long-awaited Olympic medal shot was finally his, and he took advantage of it by getting close to nailing two massive vaults on Sunday.
Finally, Skinner, 24, called the “grandmother” of the team Since he has a lot of experience in the national team, he will go to Arizona with an Olympic medal. She is retiring and has said they plan to start a family with her husband, Jonas Harmer.
“I’m sorry, but it’s time to move on with my life,” said Skinner. “I am ready.”
Two other American women competing on Sunday night were less satisfied with their performance.
Phoenix’s Carey finished second in the vault in qualifying, but stumbled on Sunday’s first vault running and was eventually freed. Only a flip and a twist-free Yurchenko could collect the tuck. The score, 11,933, knocked him out of the race for the medal.
Later that night, before the ragged bars finale, Lee was tired and nervous. Two days ago, he had won the all-around gold medal, and now he had another shot at an individual gold. He was seen as a favorite when he got into ragged bars, and his hardest routine was the hardest in the world. Winning the event was what he was training for.
However, he couldn’t connect his first skill to his second skill and his routine started to collapse. He said he could jump and drop bars easily, which he probably would have done in practice, but he continued to finish the routine at the biggest meeting of his life. In the end, he put on a simple performance that was nothing like the magnificent performance he had planned.
His score of 14.5 is almost a point lower than the 15.4 he received for bars last week in the team final. But it was still good enough for him to win a bronze medal. Two-time uneven bars world champion Nina Derwael won the gold medal for Belgium, the first Olympic women’s gymnastics medal of any type. Russian Anastasiia Iliankova took second place for silver.
Later, Lee admitted that he couldn’t help feeling devastated, as if he had let everyone down.
“I don’t want people to think I’m not grateful for this bronze medal because I really am,” she said in a one-on-one interview with tears streaming down her face. “But I came here to earn bullion and that had to be my job. I came here to do it and people were pressuring me to do it. Winning everything was what Simone had to do.”
She added: “This is all so overwhelming. I didn’t expect my Olympics to go like this, and now I’m really sorry that I didn’t do the bar routine I’ve come to do.”
Lee, who won all-around on Thursday, was flooded with media demands, including TV interview, after TV interview, and he didn’t get much sleep. He said he was going to delete Twitter from his phone because it stressed the comments there and that it was “not good for me”.
On the way to the finals, he was so distracted that he forgot the special USA team sneakers he was supposed to wear on the runway and borrowed Carey’s shoes for the ceremony.
Lee, who will compete in the balance beam final on Tuesday, said he is trying to keep Sunday’s mediocre performance in perspective. But it was difficult.
Yes, she won the all-around title, one of the most prestigious gold medals of all Summer Olympics. And yes, he led team USA to the silver medal last week when Biles withdrew after the first event.
He planned to shout out his disappointment with the uneven bars and get up in the morning refocused. Yet a glance at her hands will remind her of her humble night.
Watching all the other gymnasts complete their routines, Lee was so upset that she snapped the long acrylic nails off each of her fingers. The nails were white, and three of them had Olympic rings neatly painted over them.
He left the arena on Sunday night, hiding in his backpack.
Maggie Astor contributing reporting.
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