• Russian Olympic Committee finish day in team lead
• Angelina Melnikova anchors ROC to strong position
As Simone Biles walked off the podium following her opening floor routine of her Tokyo Olympics, she laughed bitterly to herself. She had overpowered her third tumbling pass so much that she ended up rebounding the floor and flying so far out of bounds that she cleared the raised floor. She was not happy. But what initially seemed to be an aberration in her first rotation of USA’s qualifying round turned out to be a reflection of the whole day.
With every passing rotation, the errors for USA piled up, culminating in an event that has not occurred over their past decade of dominance – for the first time since 2010, USA qualified in second for a major team final after scoring 170.562 as Russian Olympic Committee finished the day in the lead with 171.629.
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