Simone Biles ends her Olympic comeback with a silver medal in the freestyle

PARIS (AP) — American gymnast Simone Biles didn’t get the golden send-off she hoped for.

On Monday, Biles won the silver medal in the freestyle final — her eleventh Olympic medal — after taking several costly steps off the line during her routine.

Brazilian Rebeca Andrade became the first gymnast to defeat Biles in the free exercise final at a major international competition, scoring 14.166 to surpass Biles’s rating of 14.133.

The bronze medal was won by Jordan Chiles, Biles’ longtime friend and teammate.

Biles, 27, considered the best in the history of the sport, was not at her best during the performance to music by pop icons Taylor Swift and Beyonce.

Still, she managed to increase her medal haul in Paris to 4 — gold in the team final, all-around and vault, in addition to silver, surprisingly, in her favorite event.

“I couldn’t be more proud of how I did,” Biles said. “I’m 27 years old and I’m finishing these Games with four medals. I’m not mad about it.”

Biles’ medal total (including seven gold, two silver, two bronze) now equals Czech Vera Caslavska for the second-most amongst gymnasts in Olympic history. She lost her probability to win a fifth medal in Paris earlier Monday when she fell in the balance beam final while ending fifth.

While it could look easy at times, it isn’t. She hit the mat during a floor warmup and re-wrapped her stubborn left calf before the competition, which she strained in qualifying last week.

Her passes weren’t perfect – she went over the line twice – but her difficulty level is generally so high that it doesn’t really matter.

Not this time. She received an execution rating of seven.833, which included 0.6 deductions for going out of bounds, allowing Andrade to win her second Olympic gold.

Still, Biles, wearing a red, white and blue leotard embellished with hundreds of rhinestones, finished the nine-day competition in Paris, once and for all silencing critics who had long ridiculed her for withdrawing from multiple events at the Tokyo Olympics three years ago.

She won a total of 4 medals, just one lower than eight years ago in Rio de Janeiro.

Chiles — the final competitor of the day — initially received a rating of 13.666 from the judges. After a delay, her rating was increased by 0.1 when she asked about the difficulty component of her rating, allowing Chiles to overtake Romania’s Ana Barbosu and Sabrina Maneca-Voinea for third place.

Biles said that after winning the show jumping final on Saturday, she noticed that her haters “are really quiet now, which is weird.”

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In contrast, the constant roar of support that followed Biles wherever she went at Bercy Arena, which became a hub for celebrities from across the spectrum — including former NFL star Tom Brady, who performed Monday — each time she performed.

The outdoor exercise is Biles’ signature event, where she will be able to mix the most difficult, boundary-pushing acrobatics in her sport with charismatic choreography to create arguably the most enjoyable 75 seconds of her sport.

However, the enthusiasm was somewhat dampened by an unusual execution blunder.

The show ends with Biles blowing a kiss, a small gesture she has incorporated into her show in various forms over the years.

Whether that was a goodbye kiss is an open query. Maybe even Biles’.

She has not yet spoken out about what awaits her after the Paris Games, although she has left the door ajar in case of a possible return when the Olympic Games happen in Los Angeles in 2028.

“Never say never,” Biles said after winning her second Olympic title in the ski jumping event earlier in the Games. “The next Olympics are at home. So you never know. I’m really getting older.”

She’ll be 31 by then, an age when most gymnasts have long since retired. But Biles is redefining that phrase in real time, and given the gulf that also exists between her and almost everyone else in the sport — barring Andrade, who pushed Biles as hard as she’s been pushed for nearly a decade — anything is feasible.

She won the silver medal about an hour after the balance beam final, in which half of the eight competitors jumped down the steps during a routine because they lost their balance.

Biles included. She lost her balance at the end of her acrobatic series and received a rating of 13.100, which put her in fifth place, tied with teammate Sunisa Lee.

Like Biles, Lee saw her gold hopes end midway through her performance when she fell in the same portion of the performance as Biles.

Later, the two Olympic champions and long-time friends, with 17 Olympic medals between them, lamented the strange atmosphere in the strangely quiet arena, which is generally filled with music all the time.

“It adds to the stress, just because it’s like, yeah, you’re the only one there,” said Lee, who will take some day off before deciding on her future. “So I felt pressure.”

Alice D’Amato of Italy won gold on the balance beam with a rating of 14.366. Zhou Yaqin of China won silver with a rating of 14.100, just ahead of bronze medalist Manila Esposito of Italy. Italy, which won silver behind the U.S. in the team competition, has never before won a medal on the beam.

The awards podium has long served as a second home for Biles during a profession that features 41 medals in major international competitions, a number that will never be broken and — who knows? — may even be increased in Los Angeles.