Some gymnasts and coaches said there was an awkward atmosphere in the Bercy Arena during the error-riddled Olympic balance beam final on Monday.
“The crowd was great except for the ‘shushing’ on the beam,” Simone Biles’ coach, Cecile Landi, said after the competition.
Some well-meaning audience members tried to silence the athletes as they were cheering each other on as well as quieting other spectators – and it did not have the intended effect.
After completing her beam performance, which featured a fall, Biles looked bewildered and could be heard asking her teammate Sunisa Lee: “Why are they shushing?”
“It was really weird and awkward, not our favorite. None of us liked it,” Biles told reporters after finishing fifth on the beam, despite having qualified in second place.
Although it may seem counterintuitive, gymnasts often prefer noisy arenas, even on an apparatus as precarious as the beam, as it helps the athlete to focus more on the task at hand.
“Honestly, we do better in environments when there’s noise going on because it feels most like practice,” Biles said.
The format of apparatus finals means only one gymnast competes at any given time. That adds to the pressure as each performer is keenly aware that every set of eyes in the arena are centered upon them.
“You could feel the tension in the room. I mean, the crowd shushing us for cheering like we were, we didn’t like that because it’s just so silent in there,” Lee, one of four finalists to fall off the beam, said after finishing sixth. “I love hearing my teammates cheer for me.”
The athletes said they had attempted to solve the problem themselves.
“We’ve asked several times if we could have some music or some background noise, so I am not really sure what happened there,” Biles said.
Bronze medal winner Manila Esposito, who along with her teammate and gold medallist Alice D’Amato produced Italy’s first ever Olympic balance beam medals, was able to find some silver lining.
“There was a lot of silence in the gym and it was a little bit more stressful because of this, but it was nice because when we finished the exercise, it was even louder than usual,” she said.
