- Simone Biles and Team USA seek third straight Olympic team gold
- Olympics live updates: Team GB one-two in pool, Osaka exits and more!
- Games schedule | Results | Medal table | Full coverage
- Tweet Bryan at @BryanAGraham or email him
During Sunday’s qualifying, each member of the four-person team competed on each apparatus with teams dropping their lowest score. That changes with today’s three-up/three-count, a less forgiving format that has benefitted the Americans during their decade-long reign.
Each of the eight qualifying teams have selected three gymnasts to compete on each of the four apparatuses: vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor. All of these scores will be summed and counted toward the team’s final score.
Hello and welcome to today’s women’s gymnastics team all-around competition. A United States quartet headlined by Simone Biles will look to extend their reign atop the sport with a third straight Olympic gold medal, but not without a stiff challenge from a Russian Olympic Committee team that delivered a resounding statement of intent on Sunday by finishing first in qualifying by more than a full point.
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.
Bryan will be here shortly. In the meantime here’s Tumaini Carayol’s report from Sunday’s qualifying.
Related: Simone Biles leaps into Olympics action but USA’s gap over rivals narrows
