By Karen Braun
PARIS (Reuters) – Following shaky performances from her fellow Italians, teenager Angela Andreoli had to hit her floor exercise to keep her country in the silver medal position at the Olympic gymnastic team final on Tuesday and fend off challengers Brazil and Britain.
Teammate Elisa Iorio lent some calming words to the nervous 18-year-old.
“You’ve done 1,000 floor exercises before, just enjoy the moment,” she recalls Iorio saying.
The encouragement worked. As Andreoli nailed her final tumbling run, she was overcome with emotion knowing she had just secured Italy’s first Olympic team medal since 1928, a silver.
“Oh my god, did I just bring Italy to the Olympic medal podium?”
Meanwhile, the Brazilian women heading into the Games were favored for a medal, though their fourth place finish in preliminaries raised some doubts as to whether they could secure a place on the Olympic podium for the first time ever as a team.
The veteran Brazilian squad confidently entered the Bercy Arena on Tuesday dripping in gold sparkles, but troubles started early as Flavia Saraiva torpedoed herself off the uneven bars and straight onto the mat during the warm-up, gashing her face.
“I thought my, my, my, now I’ve woken up!” she said with a laugh after the competition.
“But I thought okay, let’s go, let’s experience the moment and fight.”
Brazil absorbed a fall in the second rotation on balance beam, but Saraiva, with a bandage covering her right eyebrow, brought the team back with a gutsy performance, the same routine on which she had faltered during qualifying.
Vault was Brazil’s last apparatus, where star Rebeca Andrade earned a massive 15.100, two-tenths higher than the score Simone Biles received earlier for the same vault that helped the U.S. earn gold.
But the team had to wait until the final beam performance from the British. When the scoreboard made official that they had held off the Britons for third place by 0.234 point, they immediately embraced, wiping tears from their faces.
“We are very happy and proud of what we achieved as a team today,” Andrade told reporters.
“We knew we needed to be confident until the end, because we know we have trained for this.”
Jade Barbosa, 33, emphasized what this bronze medal means for her and her country.
“Twenty years ago, in Athens, Brazil made it to the Olympic team final for the first time in history. Twenty years later, we’re here with our first-ever Olympic team medal.”
(Editing by Pritha Sarkar)
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