The 19th Olympic Individual All-around Gold Medal Winner, Sunia Biles, Hasse Leonie, Bebeca Andrade, Rebate Andrade
Biles became just the third woman in the history of the Olympics to twice win the individual all-around gold medal, and the first since the 1960s. The most decorated gymnast in Olympic history is from the Soviet Union, with nine golds.
She is the first person to win her second eight years after her first. At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, she withdrew from the individual all-around after losing her control over her body in mid-air. The intense pressure affected her mental health, and she took a two-year hiatus from the sport altogether.
Andrade ended with silver. The bronze medal was awarded to the U.S. gymnast Suni Lee, who had won the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 after Biles’s withdrawal.
On Thursday, she started the competition with the best vault in the competition. She jumped out with a 15.766, two-sixths of a point over Andrade, for her Yurenko double pike.
But her lead disappeared on the very next rotation. On the uneven bars, Biles turned in an unusually poor performance in which her momentum slowed during a swing from high bar to low bar, causing her knees to almost brush the floor. Her routine earned just a 13.733, over half a point lower than her two previous scores on the uneven bars in Paris. That moved her into third place, behind both Andrade and Algeria’s Kaylia Nemour.
This one took a lot of work and was not easy to get. Her gold required overcoming an unusually poor performance on the uneven bars that briefly put her into third place behind two strong competitors, including Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade, the gymnast widely considered to be the world’s second best.
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❓Quiz: If you’re more into sports than politics, you’re in luck with this week’s quiz. If you want to win the gold, you need to take an unusual amount of sports questions. How well do you think you’ll do?
Food by Vérane Frédiani takes readers through France’s oldest city and its diverse neighborhoods. Readers of the new French cookbook will be able to find recipes and traditions from a native.
🎵 Music: In the span of 60 years, Meredith Monk has been a musician, composer, pianist, film maker, dancer, recording artist, and educator. She is 81 and reflecting on her music-making journey.
📚 Books: Jessica Anthony’s new novel, The Most, takes place over the course of a day, allowing readers to get to know a couple’s alternating points of view — from their aspirations, personalities and backgrounds to their infidelities and secrets they’ve kept from each other.
📺 TV: Hacks, a show exploring what it means to be a comedy hack, blossomed from an idea conceived during a 2015 road trip. Lucia Aniello plays Jimmy, while Paul W. Downs co-created the show with his wife. He tellsNPR that the series means a lot to him.
The Photojournalist Gideon Mendel: Floods, Climate Change, and the Hezbollah Manifesto in Israel and Lebanon
Gideon Mendel, an award-winning photojournalist, wanted to document climate change from a young age. That’s exactly what he did when he started photographing floods. Scientists in the U.S. know that floods are becoming more frequent and severe due to extreme precipitation and sea level rise from climate change. Mendel captures the trauma that storms and rainfall leave behind. He meets and engages with the people who live in impacted communities and, if they agree, photographs them and their reality at that moment. He describes his style of photography as moving away from documentary photojournalism and somewhere into art and activism.
The possibility of even stronger attacks is on the minds of Israel and Lebanon. The leader of Hezbollah made it clear in the speech that the group would retaliate after yesterday’s funeral. He said that Hezbollah was pausing attacks because of the death of Shukr. Israel announced it had killed the head of the Hamas military wing, Mohammad Daif, in an attack in Gaza on July 13. Islamic Jihad is one of the militant groups, and Israel said it had killed a senior commander.
Source: Who are the Americans freed in a Russian prisoner swap? And, Simone Biles is GOAT
What Do U.S. Citizens Tell Us About The Gershkovich Phenomenon and the First Presidential Prisoner Exchange Between the West and Russia
President Biden and Vice President Harris welcomed home a group of Americans imprisoned by Russia last night in what was the largest prisoner exchange between the West and Russia since the end of the Cold War. Gershkovich was one of the people that landed at a Maryland Air Force Base to be with their families. The exchange was months in the making and depended on several American allies, including Germany, Slovenia, Norway and Poland. Three U.S. citizens, one legal resident and 13 German nationals were included in the swap. This is what we know about them so far.
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