Beating the GOAT is no small feat. Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade took gold in the women’s Floor Exercise Finals at the 2024 Olympics, joined on the podium by Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles, who took silver and bronze respectively. The two U.S. teammates took a moment to appreciate Andrade, who Biles has repeatedly lauded as an incredible competitor, celebrating her achievements on the world stage.
Her win makes Andrade the first person to beat Biles in a floor competition at a major, international event according to the Associated Press, but that wasn’t the only historic part of the podium. Andrade, Biles, and Chiles made up the first all-Black gymnastics podium in Olympic history.
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With Biles’s dominance, we’ve become used to seeing a Black woman winning, but the reality is that gymnastics is still a majority white sport. In the U.S. data from the 2022-2023 school year, shows that only 8% of NCAA female gymnasts were Black. And Black women have made plenty of history in recent years in gymnastics. Dominique Dawes was the first Black woman to win an individual gymnastics medal at the 1992 Olympics, but it wasn’t until 2012 that Gabby Douglas became the first Black woman to win the all around. And it wasn’t until 2023 that Biles, Andrade, and US gymnast Shilese Jones made up the first all-Black podium at a World Artistic Gymnastics Championship event.
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