PARIS — The Canadian women’s artistic gymnastics team made history two years ago when it captured the country’s first medal — a bronze — at a world championships. That third-place finish punched the team’s ticket to the 2024 Olympics, but the gymnasts were unable to repeat the feat Tuesday at Paris’ Bercy Arena, finishing fifth while the United States, led by Simone Biles, topped the podium.
Italy claimed silver and Brazil narrowly edged out Great Britain to take bronze.
Ellie Black, Canada’s most decorated gymnast who this week became the first Canadian artistic gymnast to compete in four Olympics, led the Canucks in scoring, starting with a strong showing on beam, which is typically her best event. Black fell on her routine in Sunday’s qualifying round, which cost her a spot in the apparatus finals.
Eight teams compete simultaneously in a gymnastics final and on Tuesday much of the enthusiastic crowd’s energy was fixated on the American team and Biles, who got a standing ovations when she completed her floor routine.
“It’s hard when the crowd is so loud, but it’s also something really special and really magical,” Black said after Sunday’s qualifying where they competed at the same time as host France, who did not qualify for the final.
Notably absent from the team competition was Russia, which has historically been a medal contender in gymnastics and has reached the podium in the women’s team event the last three Olympics, including taking gold in Tokyo when athletes competed under the Russian Olympic Committee banner. The International Olympic Committee banned Russian athletes from competing in the Games after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but 15 athletes carrying a Russian passport — and 17 from Belarus — were cleared to compete as neutral athletes because they have no connection country’s military and have demonstrated they do not actively support the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. Of those, three athletes (two women and one man) were invited to the gymnastics and trampoline events.
For the first time in 20 years, Canada qualified both men’s and women’s teams in artistic gymnastics for these Games. The men, who competed in qualifying Saturday, became the first Canadian team to advance to an Olympic men’s team final when they clinched the eighth and final spot. On Monday, they finished eighth.
Canada has only reached the podium in artistic gymnastics once: At the 2004 Athens Games when Kyle Shewfelt won gold in the floor exercise.
Three of the Canadian women who competed Tuesday will get a second shot at a medal later this week. Black and Stewart will compete in the all-around final Thursday starting at 6:15 p.m. local time (12:15 p.m. ET) while Olsen will compete in the vault final Saturday at 4:20 p.m. in Paris (10:20 a.m. ET).
Olsen has twice before made Olympic vault finals, finishing seventh at the 2020 Tokyo Games and eighth in Rio in 2016.
“Unfortunately, at the last Games I did miss the podium by a couple of places, but I am hoping this time around it is cleaner, more solid and I’ll be in medal contention,” Olsen said earlier this week following training. “It’s a matter of repetition and cleaning up my execution. Numbers are important. I’m going to clean up the small details and hopefully that gets it to where I want to be.”