RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Simone Biles felt her right foot slip. Then her left.
As she reached down to steady herself on the balance beam — her first visible misstep during an astonishing Olympics that includes three gold medals and some of the most boundary pushing gymnastics ever — one thought ran through her head.
"Wow, Simone, that's five-tenths," Biles said.
And that's it. Nothing more. Sure, winning a record five gold medals in Rio de Janeiro would have been cool. Yet going 5 for 5 was always somebody else's deal. It wasn't hers. Her only regret in earning bronze during the beam final on Monday centered on those five seconds when she found herself scrambling trying to recover from a wobbly landing following a front flip.