Simone Biles speaks out after being furious at crowd when she missed out on gold medal

 

Biles was not happy with the crowd during her routine.

Simone Biles has spoken out after venting her frustration at the crowd when she missed out on a medal.

American gymnast Simone Biles is one of the greatest female Olympians of all-time, and she’s more than proved that at the Paris Games.

The 27-year-old won gold in her first three events in Paris, the all around, vault and team competition.

However, Biles suffered an unexpected slip-up during the beam event on Monday (5 August) when she fell from the beam.

The error cost her dearly, as she ended up finishing in fifth place and missing out on a podium finish.

It was an uncharacteristic mistake from Biles, and it came on a day which saw an unusually high number of falls and errors from gymnasts.

BBC Sport’s commentary team suggested that ‘something in the arena’ was putting off the gymnasts, a theory that Biles appeared to confirm seconds after she completed her routine.

When she’d left the floor she could be heard saying to her teammate Sunisa Lee: “Why are they [the crowd] all shushing? As soon as I’m going they’re like shushing so much.”

Lee responded: “I don’t know why, are they [the Olympic gymnastics organisers] telling them to?”

After scoring 13.100, Biles opened up on what went wrong.

“The beam final is always the most stressful, usually we have music or background noise, whatever that may be, and honestly we do better in environments when there’s noise going on because it feels the most like practice,” she said.

“Today you could hear the ringtones going off, the photo clickers, whatever that was and you’re trying to stay in your zone and then the people start cheering and the shushing gets louder so they should be shushed because they’re louder.

Simone Biles won four medals at the 2024 Olympic Games. [Getty]
Simone Biles won four medals at the 2024 Olympic Games. [Getty]

“I don’t know, it was really weird and awkward and we’d asked if we’ve could have some music or some background noise, so I’m not really sure what happened there. It’s not our favourite, none of us liked it.

“It was an odd beam final.”

The American star recovered to secure silver in what could be her final event at an Olympic Games.

Biles finished second in the floor event, but lost out to Brazilian Rebeca Andrade after twice stepping out of the floor area during her extensive routine.

Biles scored 14.133 while Andrade won it with 14.166.

Three golds and one silver from five events is certainly not to be sniffed at though.

“I’m not upset about my performance or anything, I’m actually very happy, proud and even more excited that it’s over!” Biles said.

“I’ve accomplished way more than my wildest dreams, not just at this Olympics but in the sport – I can’t be mad at my performances.”