Simone Biles took issue with ‘weird and awkward’ Olympic beam setup

Simone Biles had an issue with how the balance beam final was set up at the Paris Olympics on Monday. After the event, the 27-year-old gymnastics star said the enviorment for the balance beam final may have rattled some nerves because it was too quiet.

“The beam final is always the most stressful, but usually we have like, music or background noise, whatever that may be,” Biles said, per Sports Illustrated. “And honestly we do better in environments when there’s noise going on because it feels most like practice. So today, like, you could hear some of the Android ringtones going off, the photo clickers, whatever that was, and so you know you’re trying to stay in your zone, and then people start cheering and then the shushing gets louder. … I don’t know, it was really weird and awkward.”

Biles added: “We’ve asked several times if we can have some music or some background noise. I’m not really sure what happened there, but yeah, not our favorite. None of us liked it.”

Biles was one of the few gymnasts who fell off the balance beam during her routines. Becasuse of that, she finished with a score of 13.1, tied with fellow American temamate Sunisa Lee for fitth place. Lee was one of the other athletes to fall off the balance beam along with Brazil’s Julia Soares and Romania’s Sabrina Maneca-Voinea.

Sports Illustrated mentioned that music appeared to be playing during team finals and all-around finals. However, the music was turned off then the gymnasts were competing in the individual event finals.

Simone Biles still had a memorable Olympic run

All was not lost for Biles on Monday as the earned a silver medal in the floor final. She ends her Paris Olympic run with three gold medals and one silver. In her career, Biles has earned 11 Oympic medals including seven gold. She has the most Olymmpic medals earned by a U.S. gymnast and tied for the second-most for a female gymnast with Věra Čáslavská.

“I’ve accomplished way more than in my wildest dreams,” Biles said during her press conference on Monday,” per Olympics.com. “Not just at this Olympics, but in the sport. A couple years ago, I didn’t think I’d be back here at an Olympic Games,” she continued. “So competing and then walking away with four medals… I’m not mad about it. I’m pretty proud of myself.”