PARIS — These were Simone Biles’s Olympics, but all week, the person she wanted to talk about was Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade.
“I don’t want to compete with Rebeca no more!” Biles joked on Thursday. “I’m tired! She’s way too close. I’ve never had an athlete that close, so it definitely put me on my toes and it brought out the best athlete in myself, so I’m excited and proud to compete with her, but uh-uh. I’m getting uncomfortable, guys! I was stressing!”
So it seemed fitting that after Andrade topped Biles to win gold in the floor routine final—the first time Biles has been beaten in that event since 2015—Biles and bronze medalist Jordan Chiles lined up next to Andrade at the podium, knelt and bowed to her.
“It was just the right thing to do,” Biles said.
Biles, 27, is the consensus world’s best gymnast, but Andrade, 25, is within a mistake behind. And on Monday, as Biles committed two errors on her floor routine, going out of bounds twice, Andrade was flawless. Biles’s silver extended her U.S. gymnastics record medal haul to 11. Andrade’s gold gave her six Olympic medals, the most ever by a Brazilian. The crowd went nuts every time she succeeded all week. So did her fellow gymnasts.
“She’s queen,” said Biles. “First, it was an all-Black podium, so that was super exciting for us. Jordan said, ‘Should we bow to her?’ I was like, ‘Absolutely.’”
Chiles added, “She’s an icon. I feel like being recognized is what everybody should do when it comes to somebody who’s put in the work and put in the dedication. So in that moment I was like, First off, again, yes, it was an all-Black podium. Second off, why don’t we just give her her flowers? She’s given not only Simone, but a lot of us in the United States, our flowers, so giving it back is what makes it so beautiful.”
Many rivals despise one another. Biles and Andrade root almost as hard for one another as they do for themselves.
“I’m not fighting against her,” Andrade said in Portuguese through an interpreter on Monday. “I’m fighting with me to be my best myself.”
Their mutual warmth comes as a welcome development in a sport that was for so long illustrated with images of Americans and Russians glaring at one another. Biles and Andrade do not share a language, but they find plenty of ways to communicate, often through exaggerated gestures and grins.
They have spent untold hours together, in practice, in competition and atop podiums. In 2018, Andrade told The Washington Post, she was scuffling in her comeback from her second of what would be three ACL tears; Biles told her not to give up. Last year at the world championships, Biles moved an imaginary crown from her head to Andrade’s after Andrade edged her on vault. (They also contributed to another all-Black podium for the individual all-around: Biles first, Andrade second and American Shilese Jones, who tore her ACL and meniscus while warming up at Olympic trials.) That night, Biles and Andrade found one another at a party and danced together. Despite understanding that Biles is often the only thing between her and gold, Andrade has said that she has encouraged Biles not to retire after Paris, telling her, “We need you.”
In Paris, they could be heard cheering for one another, and they greeted one another with hugs after nearly every score was announced. In almost every media availability, Andrade has called it an “honor” to compete against Biles. Heading into the individual all-around, Biles posted a video on TikTok in which she admitted she was nervous to compete against Andrade. “Let me just tell y’all—Rebeca’s good, bro. She is good,” she said. “I haven’t had competition like this in a while.” But, she added, “She’s super sweet and she’s overcome a couple injuries, so to see her back out here is amazing.” After one of Andrade’s vaults on Saturday, Biles turned to teammate Jade Carey, grinned and shrugged dramatically, as if to say, “What are we supposed to do about her?”
Biles and Andrade both did all they could. And in the end, they celebrated together.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Rebeca Andrade and Simone Biles Are Each Other’s Biggest Rivals—And Biggest Supporters.
