Jordanian Kaylia Nemour, 17, at the Olympic Games, won silver in the individual all-around final at Bercy Arena

Sunday’s bronze is Lee’s third and final medal of the 2024 Games after she won bronze in the individual all-around final and helped the U.S. win a gold in the team event.

In Sunday’s competition at Bercy Arena in Paris, Lee finished behind the talented 17-year-old Kaylia Nemour of Algeria, whose score of 15.7 won her the gold. Qiu Qiyuan, also 17, of China scored 15.5 to win silver.

For Nemour who was born and raised in France, the gold is extra meaningful. She began representing Algeria after the French Gymnastics Federation denied her a return to competition because of a knee injury. This title is a first for Algeria and any African gymnast at the Olympic Games.

The final day of gymnastics for Biles, the winner of four gold medals and three bronze medals, and the loss of a competitor in the gymnastics apparatus

“It feels amazing to have it over with, honestly. Lee said that he was too nervous to watch everyone. “I got to watch everyone and it put the pressure on me a little bit. But I’m really happy that it did, because I feel like I did everything that I came to do.”

But those plans seemed to be derailed early last year, when two serious kidney conditions forced her to retire early from her college gymnastics career. She found it difficult to bend her joints because of the rapid weight gain and swelling caused by the illness. Her doctors were, at first, stumped about the cause. At times, she believed she would never compete again.

“I’m so, so glad that I never gave up, because there were so many times where I thought about quitting and walking away from the sport because I didn’t think that I would ever get to this point,” she said in June after qualifying for the U.S. Olympic team.

The apparatus is difficult in women’s gymnastics. Athletes must pack as many skills as they can into a 90-second routine — back handsprings, one-legged turns, flips, jumps and leaps, all performed on an apparatus just four inches wide.

Monday marked Biles’s final day of competition at the 2024 Olympic Games, and perhaps as what may be her final Olympic Games comes to a close. She has won 10 Olympic medals in her career, seven of them gold.

The beam final was the first of two competitions for Biles on Monday. The second, the floor exercise, in which she is the favorite to win gold, will follow about two hours later.

Many of the other competitors in the final fell or wobbled badly on the balance beam, it was one of those days. Italy’s Alice D’Amato, one of the few to perform her routine without a major error, took the gold. China’s Zhou Yaqin won silver, followed by Italy’s Manila Esposito with bronze.

“Balance beam is such an unforgiving, uncertain event. Mistakes happen all the time,” Zhou said afterward. The nature of balance beam and high pressure are some of the reasons for the stumbles.

The gymnasts were shushing the crowd when they tried to cheer for their competitors, with the packed crowd at Bercy Arena quiet on Monday. “When I was up there, you could probably hear me breathing. She said that it adds to the stress.

The falls seeped into the men’s events, too. The horizontal bar final contestants fell or slipped off of the bar.

What is next after a gold medal? A comment on Biles on the social media site X and her post on “The Paris tragedy and the Olympics”

Most elite female gymnasts are in their 30s. No competitors were older than 21 when they faced Biles on Monday. Most were still in their teens.

She wrote on the social media site X, “You guys really gotta stop asking athletes what’s next after winning a medal at the Olympics.” When asked what her next step would be after Paris, Biles replied “babysitting the medal.”