Women's Olympic gymnastic team announced

SPRING, Texas - The women’s Olympic gymnastics finals are over and America’s team has been selected that will travel to Rio de Janeiro for the Games that start August 5.

If the team hopes to recapture the gold medal for team competition and defend the title won at the London 2012 Olympics, they’ll have to execute cleanly, without stepping out of bounds on the floor routine (the top three competitors did), taking an extra step on the landings off the vault and uneven parallel bars, and correct the balance issues on the beam (that’s why it’s called the balance beam). All which happened in both rotations of the finals, part 1 and 2. At the end of the evening, Spring's Simone Biles was at the top of the leader board by 2.1 points, but not on top of her game.

In the second round of the finals, the magnificent floor routines of Simone Biles, Laurie Hernandez, and Ali Raisman, were flawed when each of them stepped out of bounds. Simone Biles fell off the beam, as did some of the other competitors, and many couldn’t stick the landings. But the chalk dust has settled, and the highest combined score from the four events (balance beam, uneven parallel bars, the vault, and the floor routines), and also factoring in past Olympic and World Championships experience, the USA women’s gymnastic team is as follows:

• Simone Biles
• Gabby Douglas
• Laurie Hernandez
• Madison Kocian
• Ali Raisman

Alternates:

• Ashton Locklear
• MyKala Skinner
• Ragan Smith

The team is rich in diversity, not only because of their ethnicities, but also their strengths, which is what Márta Károlyi, the national team coordinator for USA Gymnastics, was looking for in putting the strongest team together to repeat team gold. The team will have the opportunity to work with Karolyi for a couple of weeks before traveling to Rio, which will be time well spent to work out the chinks in the armor, which could mean the difference between silver and gold.

See related article about Olympic finals competition:

First round of women's gymnastics Olympic Finals

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