The night Simone Biles was once again the center of attention at the Olympics

PARIS — There was a lot going on Tuesday night at the Bercy Arena, a bustling 15,000-seat bowl of joy. There was the 2024 Olympic women’s team gymnastics final. There were celebrities. (Is that Spike Lee?) There was the production value of the Olympics, which, from inception to now, has been one long, brilliant brushstroke.

That was all there. Enough to fill an evening in Paris to the brim.

But then there was Simone Biles.

And anything in contact with Biles’ orbit immediately appears to align with an impossibly large eclipse.

This is something you have to see, not just to believe, but to remotely understand. All the voices and opinions about the woman who is undoubtedly the greatest American gymnast in history, and one of the greatest American Olympians ever, seem so singularly small and insignificant and comically misleading when the magnitude of Biles’ presence is seen with one’s own eyes.

Tuesday in Paris was the ultimate — and perhaps final — tableau of that fact. Seeing Biles in a team competition is like seeing the Eiffel Tower. He stands alone, is all you see, but is surrounded by grandeur.

Biles competes in three of the four individual event finals later this week, but Tuesday was likely her last Olympic performance as part of the five-person team playing for a collective goal. As expected, she and the Americans won a clinical team gold. And as expected, Biles was a 4-foot-8 centripetal force who moved the room with every step.

It’s a complicated dynamic, one part bigger than the whole. But that’s Biles’ reality. A reality that teammates Jordan Chiles, Sunisa Lee, Jade Carey and Hezly Rivera understand better than anyone. They knew what was coming Tuesday. One or two or three cameras followed Biles from the moment she walked into the arena to the moment she walked out.

But for the viewer to see it in real life? It is an exercise in understanding the weight of greatness.

It was 6:31 p.m. local time when Biles stepped onto the floor. Romania’s Ana Barbosu was in the middle of her floor routine when the arena unmoored as Biles neared the end of the vaulting track. The moment had been eight years in the making, and everyone in the building knew it. The poetic symmetry of Biles attempting the same event so closely associated with her withdrawal from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics was hard to miss. You’d like to know how aware Barbosu was as the air in the arena shifted as Biles sprinted down the track.

Simone Biles began Tuesday on the vault, the event she retired from in Tokyo, and handled it with ease en route to a flawless evening. (Pete Dovgan/Speed ​​Media/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Biles was soon sitting on one of the elevated levels. Doing nothing. Just watching the game. Legs dangling. A little removed, a little alone, probably rehearsing her routine in her head. But there in front of her? Two cameramen were maybe 8 feet away. Filming every breath and blink. All night long, one, usually two, sometimes three or four broadcast cameras were trained solely on Biles. Anyone who appeared on television was either doing so in passing or because she was actively competing on some apparatus.

Biles moved, cameras moved. Biles stood still, cameras stood still. At one point, as she sat on the floor, a cameraman stood next to her, a camera hanging from his hip, eye level with Biles, his other hand in his pocket.

When Biles went to the team bench area to line up for her rotation on the uneven bars, she sat close to the photographers’ pen. A group of bodies 40 or 50 deep approached, as if they were in a single elevator. All the photos they took were in forensic detail. The lenses were inches from her face. The rest of the U.S. team sat a few feet away, completely undisturbed.

Biles, who has spoken at length about battling all the attention she’s received since she was a teenager, her journey with nerves, and her overall mental health, is clearly aware that her every move is on film. She’s also aware, of course, that her teammates aren’t. That’s the terrain for any GOAT, and instead of fighting it, she ignores the lens or occasionally breaks the fourth wall. Biles looks straight into the camera and offers a knowing smirk or what feels like a wink. It’s a wink to those who get it, a wink that they’re all in this together.

From left: Jordan Chiles, Hezly Rivera, Simone Biles, Sunisa Lee and Jade Carey celebrate their team gold on Tuesday during the Olympic Games. (Aytac Unal/Anadolu via Getty Images)

On Tuesday, Biles landed a jazzed-up version of Pachelbel’s Canon during Canada’s Cassie Lee’s floor routine. The building erupted as Biles blew a kiss into a camera lens that had been trained on her for the previous 45 minutes.

On the floor, Biles’ routine was met with a studied silence each Tuesday, and every landing was met with boisterous approval. Those cheering the loudest were usually Biles’ teammates.

That’s probably the ultimate compliment. The attention Biles gets is unlike anything in gymnastics, but, you could argue, in sports in general. It’s the hyper-attention to her performance, and her psyche, and her place in the pantheon, and that she’s still the best alive, and her position in life. To carry all that and still be part of something resembling a team in a sport that’s inherently individual?

That’s perhaps what got lost in all the attention for her latest gold medal, her fifth.

Biles came to these Olympics to please herself. She’s said that repeatedly. Put it out there, put it all on the table. At 27, an age that essentially entitles her to social security in the world of elite gymnastics, these Olympics are her chance to compete for the right reasons, rather than to please others.

She could have come to Paris and lived on an island. Instead, she was right in the middle of it.

After the gold medal ceremony on Tuesday night, Chiles revealed that she had called a small gathering the night before to have a difficult conversation. The implication was that she wanted to address the fact that everyone’s support for each other might not be as genuine or powerful as it was being presented. Chiles wanted to talk to Lee about it, but before she did, she tapped Biles to be part of the conversation. In Chiles’ retelling of the story, it was understood that whatever Biles said in that room was what was heard.

That’s what it means to be one of one.

When it comes to Simone Biles, it’s important to remember that not all the attention is given to her.

It is deserved.

Simone Biles took the gold medal for the Americans on her floor exercise. Fittingly, she was the last gymnast to compete on Tuesday. (Amin Mohammad Jamali/Getty Images)

(Top photo of Simone Biles celebrating Tuesday’s team final victory: Aytac Unal/Anadolu via Getty Images)