Floor Exercise, Women

Simone Biles qualified second for the floor behind Italy’s Vanessa Ferrari, the 2006 all-round world champion, who was competing in her fourth Olympics. Sadly, due to her problems, Biles withdrew from the event, which enabled Great Britain’s Jennifer Gadirova to compete alongside her twin sister Jessica. With the defending champion Biles again out of the apparatus final, Ferrari was likely to find opposition in another American, Jade Carey, and the new Brazilian individual all-round silver medallist Rebeca Andrade.

The second onto the floor was Carey and she set a strong mark of 14.366 with a well-executed routine. Angelina Melnikova of the ROC finished seventh in qualification, but her 14.166 put her in second place until the next up, Ferrari, put herself between Carey and Melnikova and into the silver medal position. Japan’s women’s gymnastics captain Mai Murakami tied with Melnikova with 14.166 and with that they could not be separated after identical E (execution) and D (difficulty) scores and were sharing the bronze medal, but with Andrade still to perform her routine. Unfortunately for her, she received only 14.033 points and was out of the medals as Carey collected the USA’s second gold of Tokyo 2020, while Ferrari won her first Olympic medal in her fourth Games.

Since her début Olympics at Rio, Mai Murakami’s career had been a roller coaster. In winning the floor gold medal at the 2017 World Championships, she became the first Japanese woman in 63 years to win a world title. The following year she was the individual all-round silver medallist, another first for a female Japanese gymnast. In 2019, however, she suffered a serious back injury that threatened her career, but now, two years later, that was all forgotten as she was the proud owner of an Olympic medal.