What you need to know about artistic gymnastics at 2024 Paris Olympics

Editor’s note: Follow Olympic gymnastics live results, scores and highlights as Simone Biles and the U.S. women’s team compete in the team final.

Here’s what you need to know about artistic gymnastics at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

When did artistic gymnastics become an Olympic sport?

Artistic gymnastics, or gymnastics as it’s traditionally known, was part of the first “modern” Olympics in 1896, and has been part of every Summer Games since. It has undergone some changes – rope climbing was once an event, and women weren’t allowed to compete in the Olympics until 1928 – but it has had largely the same format for the last 60 years. Men compete on six apparatuses – floor exercise, pommel horse, still rings, vault, parallel bars and high bar – while women compete on four – vault, uneven bars, balance beam, floor exercise.

How does Olympic artistic gymnastics work?

A gymnastics routine gets two scores: One for difficulty, also known as the D score or start value, and one for execution. Every gymnastics skill has a numerical value, and the D score is the sum total of the skills in a routine. The execution score, or E score, reflects how well the skills were done. A gymnast starts with a 10.0, and deductions for flaws and form errors are taken from there.

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Add the D and E scores together, and that’s your total for an apparatus. (Vault scores will always be higher because it’s a single skill.)

Every gymnast goes through qualifying. The top 24 all-around gymnasts, with a limit of two per country, advance to the all-around final, where scoring starts over. The top eight gymnasts on each apparatus, again with a two-per-country limit, advance to the event finals. Scoring starts over there, too.

For the 12 countries in the team competition, they will put four of their five gymnasts up on each event in qualifying and can drop their lowest score. You’ll sometimes hear this referred to as “5-4-3.” The top eight teams advance to the final where, you guessed it, scoring starts over. 

In the team final, however, countries compete three gymnasts on each event and must count all three scores. Also known as three-up, three-count. Have to count a fall, and your chances at the gold are probably gone. Count two or three, and you can forget about a medal of any color.

Who are the top Team USA athletes in artistic gymnastics?

Simone, Simone and Simone again. Simone Biles returned to competition last year for the first time since the Tokyo Olympics, where she was forced to withdraw from the team final and all but one event final because of “the twisties.” In her return, she looked spectacular, winning her sixth all-around title and becoming the most-decorated gymnast, male or female, with 37 medals at the world championships and Olympics.

So long as Biles is on her game, she will be favored for golds in the team competition, all-around, vault, balance beam and floor exercise. If she’s healthy, don’t count out reigning Olympic champion Suni Lee.

Fred Richard and Asher Hong lead a young but very talented U.S. men’s team. Their bronze at last year’s world championships was their first medal at a worlds or the Olympics since 2014, and the team only gets stronger with the return of two-time national champion Brody Malone, who missed last year with a knee injury.

What’s the international landscape in Olympic artistic gymnastics?

Russia is the only team that could give the American women and the Japanese and Chinese men a real fight, winning both team golds in Tokyo. But the Russians won’t be in Paris, banned from the Olympics as punishment for their invasion of Ukraine.

That means the gold is the U.S. women’s to lose. Even without Simone Biles, who was taking time off after Tokyo, the Americans won their sixth consecutive team title at the world championships in 2022. With Biles back last year, the U.S. women made it seven in a row, beating Brazil by more than two points. In a sport where medals can come down to hundredths of a point, that’s a big gap.

On the men’s side, Japan and China are in a class ahead of everyone else.

In the individual events, the only woman who comes close to Biles is Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade, who finished second to the American at last year’s world championships. But Andrade would likely have to be perfect and Biles would need to make a couple of mistakes for the Brazilian to deny Biles a second all-around title.

Japan’s Daiki Hashimoto, who has added the last two world titles to his all-around gold from Tokyo, is the one to beat in the men’s all-around. His toughest competition will likely be from teammate Kenta Chiba and Ukraine’s Ilia Kovtun, but Fred Richard has a shot at the podium if they are clean.