Simone Biles & Rebeca Andrade Show You Can Root For Your Rivals in Heartwarming Exchange
PARIS, FRANCE - AUGUST 01: Silver medal winner Rebeca Andrade of Brazil, Gold medalist and winner Simone Biles of USA and Bronze medal winner Sunisa Lee of USA (L-R) celebrate with the medals after the women's Artistic Gymnastics All-Around Final on day six of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Bercy Arena on August 01, 2024 in Paris, France. (Photo by Stefan Matzke - sampics/Getty Images)
Simone Biles from the United States and Rebeca Andrade from Brazil showed what sportsmanship is all about while competing in the All-Around Gymnastics final on Thursday, August 1, 2024. Biles won the gold medal in the event, while Andrade won the silver. Sunisa Lee from the United States went on to capture bronze.
But the thing people were talking about wasn’t just that Biles is now the first woman since Vera Čáslavská, who did it in 1964 and 1968 to win two All-Around Gymnastics gold medals. Or that this is her sixth Olympic gold medal. People weren’t even talking about what it meant for Andrade to win her second medal in these Olympic games, after Brazil won bronze in the team event, coming from a country where gymnastics has very little institutional support.
No, people were talking about the fact that Biles and Andrade spent the entire meet rooting for each other to succeed, even though they were essentially each other’s greatest competition.
Social media was abuzz about their sportsmanship, with comments ranging from: “Simone Biles and Rebeca Andrade treating this competition like just two friends having a nice day out stomping routines is so fun to watch”
Others were pointing out how Biles was cheering for Andrade and yelling out, “Come on. You got it!”
Some were just sharing how the two were just laughing together while waiting to compete.
And others were pointing how the two were genuinely just congratulating each other when the other did well during the competition with tweets that said, “Hard working, great work ethic, champion…sisters. This is what true sisterhood looks like.”
Later, Simone joked that she was tired of competing against Andrade. “I’ve never had an athlete that close. So it definitely put me on my toes and it brought out the best athlete in myself. So I’m excited and proud to compete with her. But…I don’t like it no more. I’m getting uncomfortable guys. I don’t like that feeling. I was stressed.”
But Andrade wasn’t having it. She doesn’t want it to end. “I don’t get tired of competing with her, because she is the best,” Andrade replied. “She extracted the best out of me and I hope I do the same for her,” she said.
The two will face off against each other again in the floor, vault, and beam event finals. So there’s plenty of Biles vs. Andrade left in these Olympics.
