Eventually, she decided to try, returning to the gym one casual visit at a time. The uncertainty gradually dissolved. And before the all-around final at these Paris Olympics, she knew she had made it all the way back to the top. She packed a necklace and had a plan. After her final routine, a standout performance that clinched the all-around gold medal, she placed the chain around her neck and showed off a sparkling pendant in the shape of a goat. Biles has proved that she’s the GOAT of gymnastics. And she knows it.

Biles has conquered her sport and herself. There is nothing left to accomplish.

In the tense all-around final, Biles had to perform at her best to earn the title. She didn’t cruise to a win as she has so often in the past. A mistake on bars pushed her into an unfamiliar position: third place at the midway point. For years, she hasn’t had a challenger as strong as Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade. With one rotation remaining, Biles led by less than two-tenths of a point. But then she asserted her dominance. As the final competitor, she soared through her floor routine, flipping and twisting in ways that no woman can match. With that one routine, she emerged as the champion of a dramatic battle for gold.

“I don’t want to compete with Rebeca no more,” Biles said afterward. “I’m tired. She’s way too close. I’ve never had an athlete that close.”

Biles’s final act of this marquee event was more than enough to seal the title. Her score of 59.131 ultimately towered above Andrade’s 57.932, which was good enough for silver, but the margin was that wide only because of Biles’s excellence in the final rotation. It was also a reminder of Biles’s dominance. Even when she is imperfect, she cannot be defeated, and her beam and floor routines proved her mettle. On bars, she struggled through a salto transition from the high bar to the low bar. She had to bend her knees and maintained her rhythm through sheer will. Afterward, with Andrade having climbed ahead, Biles knew she had to re-center herself.

“I was probably praying to every single god out there,” Biles said.

During the meet, Biles and U.S. teammate Sunisa Lee scrambled to do math in their heads — Lee as she successfully won the race for bronze and Biles as she fought Andrade for gold.

“I don’t like that feeling,” Biles said. “I was stressing!”

Lee added: “I had never seen you that stressed in my life.”

But this version of Biles, confident and prepared, could handle the pressure. This was just an error — nothing like what happened in Tokyo. Instead, Biles’s performance was a sign of how far she has come.

When the world watched Biles at the Olympics three years ago, the toll of the extraordinary pressure, plus trauma buried inside, spilled over onto the competitive floor. Biles couldn’t go on. It would have been too dangerous to fly through the air when the usually innate connection between her mind and body had frayed. Many praised how she prioritized her physical and mental health. Others called her a quitter.

Biles took a break from the sport, without a murmur about whether her future would include another competitive routine. She quietly decided to return ahead of the 2023 season, later citing obvious motivation: “You saw what happened,” Biles said, referring to the trouble in Tokyo. But she insisted she was doing it for herself alone. It was a chance to author her own ending.

Over the past year, one successful competition after another, Tokyo loomed over Biles each time she performed. In her carefully limited media appearances, she and her coaches faced redundant questions all centered around the same theme: Would this Olympics be different?

Biles emphatically answered. She led the U.S. women to the team gold, and two days later, she earned the sport’s most coveted medal, its ribbon framing the sparkling goat that remained on Biles’s chest on the podium. Biles, the world’s most decorated gymnast with 30 world championship medals to go with her Olympics haul that now stands at nine, has three more opportunities to win gold in the individual apparatus finals.

Andrade, the Brazilian star, seized the role as a formidable challenger to Biles. But Biles has difficulty scores that are so high that her peers, even Andrade, have a chance only if Biles falters. The single mistake Thursday wasn’t enough to outweigh Biles’s excellence on every other apparatus. Lee, the all-around champion in Tokyo, battled kidney-related health issues last year, with her podium finish here the exclamation mark on an arduous road back to world-class form. Lee posted a 56.465, taking the bronze by a tiny margin thanks to her fantastic floor routine. But Biles’s ascent back to the top of the podium took center stage.

Biles began the competition by launching her body through the air and performing the double-flipping vault that bears her name. Her alternative option is safer, mentally and physically. But Biles performed the Yurchenko double pike Thursday, in large part because she knew she might need that scoring boost against Andrade.

“I have to bring out the big guns this time,” Biles said she thought.

Biles’s mind and body are perfectly in sync. Her competitive repertoire is just as complex as it was before Tokyo. Those difficult skills have solidified her legacy in the sport, and in every competition, they made her unstoppable. That’s what helped Biles return to the pinnacle of her sport. There’s no room for doubt anymore. Tokyo now defines only the magnitude of Biles’s comeback.

After all the trauma and doubt and suffocating expectations, after all the physical and emotional effort it took to return, Biles deserves to flaunt the latest accomplishment of her sterling career. On a tense Thursday night inside Bercy Arena, Biles became the first American gymnast to win two all-around Olympic gold medals, adding more of her fingerprints to the claim that she’s the best the sport has ever seen. She didn’t ice out that pendant because she has an affinity for livestock. She’s embracing that she may be the GOAT, the popular sports acronym for Greatest Of All Time.

Her case for that title no longer depends on the ease with which she wins. She has the fight of a champion, too. If her courage over the last three years wasn’t convincing enough, she showed it again on the biggest stage, outlasting silver medalist Rebeca Andrade in a competition that was draining even to watch.

“I was probably praying to every single god out there,” Biles said.

During the second rotation, she hindered her chances to win gold with a near-disastrous showing on the uneven bars, responded on the balance beam and turned celestial, as usual, during the floor routine. With Andrade as a worthy challenger, Biles had to overcome a deficit. In the end, her 59.131 score was 1.199 points better than Andrade. By the incomparable Biles standard, the margin was slim. During the 2016 Olympics, she won the all-around by more than two points.

“I was stressing,” Biles said of the night.

Said U.S. teammate Sunisa Lee, who also battled impressively to earn the bronze: “I had never seen you that stressed in my life.”

Trailing Andrade halfway through the night, Biles and Lee tried to calculate the deficit.

“I don’t even know how to do math in my head,” Lee said.

“Me, either,” Biles told her.

Perhaps it would have been too much drama for Biles if she hadn’t already been through hell. At the Tokyo Games three years ago, she had to withdraw from this competition. Her mental health had waned. She remembers being so focused on avoiding an injury that she neglected her mind. She carried too much into Tokyo, including the physical and emotional abuse of rising through the USA Gymnastics system. Still, she wanted to keep lifting the program. But when she experienced the “twisties” and couldn’t control her body in midair, she had to pause her dominant career and explain to the world that she is human.

In showing vulnerability, she further erased the stigma about mental health problems and opened the way for a healthier conversation about how to strive in sports. But at the time, she figured that would be the way her career ended.

“I never thought I’d be on a world stage again competing,” Biles said.

Greatness without setback is greatness unknown. The most admirable champions aren’t defined by everlasting dominance. As much as we love a winner, we prefer to see the best challenged. We want to see evolution. We want to see strain. We want to see them overcome formidable opponents and search within themselves for something less obvious than their talent. To resonate the way Biles has, it takes more than supernatural athletic ability. Because of her struggles, she became relatable and unfathomable. She spends all that time flipping in the air, but the truest indicator of her transcendence came when we realized that her feet still touch the ground. She doesn’t have powers. She’s powerful.

“For me, it’s just learning not to give up,” Biles said.

She shares that she has been in therapy “religiously” every Thursday for the past three years. Before she made history, she spoke to her therapist at 7 a.m. to start the day. When something bad ensnares the mind, it can feel impossible to shake loose, but once you are free, look at the heights you can reach.

Biles didn’t soar above all this time. It felt more like she soared with all, like she took everyone along for the thrill. The arena pulsated as she tried to capture the all-around gold again. It was different from any atmosphere I can remember. When she posted just the 16th-best score on the uneven bars, it seemed that an entire Zip code stressed. Not everyone wanted Biles to win, but they were invested in her succeeding. It was a spiritual experience.

A sport of ephemeral brilliance, gymnastics doesn’t get Olympic competitions like this. It’s the first time that two all-around Olympic champions — Biles in 2016, Lee in 2021 — had competed against each other. Andrade won silver in the all-around three years ago. The competition reflected their experience. They made for one royal medal stand.

“I think I have to bring out the big guns this time,” Biles thought to herself before the meet.

She decided to begin with her most difficult vault, the Yurchenko double pike, after vacillating. She made the right decision. If she had played it safer, her margin for error would have been microscopic the rest of the night. Andrade had a terrific vault, scoring 15.100. Biles went to the rafters and stayed on her feet, posting a 15.766. That initial decision and solid execution kept Biles from falling into a deeper hole after the uneven bars humbled her.

“I’ve never had an athlete that close, so it definitely put me on my toes,” Biles said of Andrade. “It brought out the best athlete in myself. So I’m excited and proud to compete with her, but I’m getting uncomfortable, guys! I don’t like that feeling.”

She was startled, but she refocused. She stayed in the moment. She didn’t fixate on reclaiming her status with the all-around title. Self-care doesn’t require redemption. When the United States captured the team gold, the gymnasts used the concept of redemption, but for Biles, this was about completing her third Olympic act. She needed to do it for herself, no one else.

As she celebrated, her joy didn’t come from the crowd’s adoration or the enhancement of fame. It wasn’t because she added more cement to her legacy or proved her resilience. She wanted to make one simple statement: She loves herself — again, or maybe for the first time, or definitely without victorious conditions attached. You see it in everything she does. You see it in everything she wears.

“My goat necklace is just kind of an ode,” said Biles, who now has six golds and nine total medals in her Olympic career. “People love it. Some people hate it. So it’s like the best of both worlds.”

Later, she expressed disbelief at the GOAT suggestion because, “I just still think I’m Simone Biles from Spring, Texas, that loves to flip.”

That giddy girl was a phenom.

This triumphant woman is her own kind of wonder.

The prizes of this year’s market, when all was said and done, were Jack Flaherty, Yusei Kikuchi, Tanner Scott, Jason Adam and a handful of other late-game relievers who can eat the innings contenders are so desperately trying to fill. The reason for the relative lack of star power moved was, in hindsight, simple: In a year defined by injuries to front-line starters and relievers, contending teams were so in need of pitching that those who had it to sell were asking for the moon.

In many cases, they got it. The Toronto Blue Jays received three big-league-ready prospects for a few weeks of Kikuchi. The Miami Marlins got three of the San Diego Padres’ top five prospects for closer Tanner Scott, and the Tampa Bay Rays got three more top ­Padres youngsters for Adam.

The Baltimore Orioles had to cough up one of their better prospects, Connor Norby, alongside promising outfielder Kyle Stowers for starter Trevor Rogers, who owns a 4.53 ERA but will be under team control for two more seasons. The Orioles made several moves to bolster their roster for the stretch run, also adding starter Zach Eflin as part of their rotation remodel, trading for former Philadelphia Phillies relievers Seranthony Domínguez and Gregory Soto (in separate deals) and acquiring Eloy Jiménez from the White Sox and Austin Slater from the Cincinnati Reds to offer some right-handed-hitting outfield options after trading Austin Hays for Domínguez last week.

As contending teams go, that qualified as a substantial haul. The New York Yankees added infielder Jazz Chisholm Jr., but they did not add a starter even though they needed one. They acquired late-inning relief option Mark Leiter Jr., traded away reliever Caleb Ferguson and brought in reliever Enyel De Los Santos from the Padres. The Phillies got the right-handed platoon option they needed in Hays, the closer they needed in former Angel Carlos Estévez and another reliever in Tanner Banks. The Los Angeles Dodgers stockpiled infield depth in Tommy Edman and ex-Ray Amed Rosario, along with ­Michael Kopech and Flaherty.

The first-place Cleveland Guardians, meanwhile, retooled on a budget: They acquired Lane Thomas from the Washington Nationals and Alex Cobb from the San Francisco Giants in moves that cost relatively little in money and fair returns in prospects, addressing major needs in both deals. Their top American League Central competition, the Kansas City Royals, also made major improvements by acquiring relievers Hunter Harvey and Lucas ­Erceg and swingman Michael Lorenzen. The Seattle Mariners tried to fix their anemic offense by trading for Randy Arozarena — one of the biggest stars moved this week — and Justin Turner, and they added to their bullpen with Yimi García and Ryne Stanek.

The biggest deal in hype and quantity was the three-team deal the Dodgers, the White Sox and the St. Louis Cardinals made that resulted in Kopech and Edman joining the Dodgers and Erick Fedde and Tommy Pham becoming Cardinals. The Rays and Marlins orchestrated large-scale sell-offs that netted them multiple top prospects. The Blue Jays, who chose to sell only expiring contracts rather than tear things down completely in the midst of a disappointing season, dealt Kevin Kiermaier to the Dodgers, Trevor Richards to the Minnesota Twins, Isiah Kiner-Falefa to the Pittsburgh Pirates, Turner and García to the Mariners, Nate Pearson to the Chicago Cubs and Danny Jansen to the Boston Red Sox in moves that will help bolster their depth ahead of another attempt to contend in 2025.

But in sum, the star power exchanged at the deadline was limited, particularly compared with years past. There was no Juan Soto deal seizing the spotlight, no future Hall of Famers such as Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander on offer. On the flip side, no prospects ranked in Baseball America’s top 100 were dealt, the first time that has happened since at least 2014.

As has been true since MLB expanded its postseason to 12 teams in 2022, more teams in reach of playoff spots meant fewer true sellers, and fewer true sellers meant fewer opportunities for buyers to pry stars away from their current teams. It showed.

Now, any additions that teams need to help them get to and get through October will have to come from inside the organization. Few contenders will be selling out jerseys for new big-name stars. This deadline was defined more by moves made to plug weaknesses, not suddenly establish new strengths.

Perhaps, in time, a contender will prove that this deadline changed its fate dramatically. But the whole event might best be summarized by the fact that, as of 6:01 p.m. Tuesday, exactly who that team might be simply was not clear.

It’s been a while. With noticeable problems, they stumbled in the 2021 Olympic semifinals and crashed out of the 2023 World Cup in the round of 16 — the earliest exit in program history.

But here they were in this Mediterranean port city, buzzing for more goals and repelling almost every insurgency en route to three consecutive victories by a 9-2 aggregate score. Two formidable foes — Germany on Sunday and Australia on Wednesday — were not much of a match following a breezy opener against Zambia.

“We really used each game to grow and add different layers to our game, but everyone knows it’s now knockout rounds,” left back Crystal Dunn said. “It’s almost like a completely different tournament.”

Washington Spirit star Trinity Rodman scored late in the first half and substitute Korbin Albert added a remarkable goal in the 77th minute before Alanna Kennedy scored in stoppage time for the Matildas (1-2-0).

On Saturday at Parc des Princes in Paris, the United States will face Japan, which finished second behind world champion Spain in Group C with a 2-1-0 record. The U.S. men will also visit Paris for a quarterfinal, Friday against Morocco.

With a quarterfinal slot already assured, the U.S. women entered Wednesday with a chance to win the group and maintain their positive rhythm. To Coach Emma Hayes, though, there was concern about not finishing the job.

“I said to the girls before the game, ‘This is a banana-skin game,’” the British-born coach said. “They said, ‘What’s that mean?’ They said, ‘It’s called a trap in America.’ I said, ‘Okay, this is a trap game.’”

Hayes explained: “We had to work through the interferences. Whether that’s, ‘Oh, we are going to Paris. Oh, we’ve got to pack. Oh, we’re already through [to the next round].’ This is the game where your conscious brain has to speak to your unconscious brain. And when your unconscious brain starts going, ‘It’s hot. I’m tired. I want to sit down. I want to drink. Can I do this?’ You have to go to the front of your head and say, ‘Next action, next action, next action.’ I thought we were relentless with that. I thought we were in complete control of the game and maybe too careless in the end.”

As the first half wore on, the Americans turned up the heat. Australia’s Mackenzie Arnold pushed Lindsey Horan’s close-range header off the underside of the crossbar and swatted Rodman’s threat.

The breakthrough came on the ensuing corner kick in the 43rd minute, though it took several minutes to confirm it.

Rose Lavelle served the set piece. Australia won the header, but the ball drifted to Sophia Smith on the back side for a downward header through a mass of bodies. It took two bounces before dropping in front of Rodman inside the six-yard box for a quick stab.

Referee François Letexier waited for the video replay crew to rule out any issues. U.S. midfielder Sam Coffey had been in an offside position on Smith’s header, but did she interfere with the play?

A communication issue between Letexier and the video replay officials delayed the ruling. Letexier finally signaled the goal was good. But wait! Another delay. Letexier finally checked the monitor and allowed the goal.

“In your head, you just stay at 0-0,” said Rodman, who also scored in the opener. “You can’t get too excited. … We were like, ‘No matter what happens, we’re in a good spot and we’ll get one even if they call it back.’”

The Americans controlled the second half and expanded the lead when Albert, a 20-year-old midfielder employed by Paris Saint-Germain, smashed a 25-yard shot into the upper corner for her first international goal.

“I actually closed my eyes” while the ball was in flight, she said, “and then I opened them and I was like, ‘Oh my God.’”

Albert’s teammates rushed to embrace her — a notable moment after Albert received criticism this spring, including from current and former U.S. players, for social media activity that supported anti-LGBTQ+ content, among other things.

“We all know she’s been through a lot with her actions and she’s someone who is truly sorry for what she’s done,” Hayes said of Albert, who apologized in March. “She’s a really inclusive person and she’s really thoughtful and kind, and she has had to do a fair bit of growing up.”

Albert said, “It’s tough love sometimes [from Hayes], and it’s really nice just to have her here and teaching me and guiding me in every way — personally and on the soccer field.”

After Albert’s goal, Smith’s deflected shot hit both posts but didn’t cross the line. Kennedy then answered, creating some late anxiety for the U.S. team.

“We knew this was going to be a process and we knew we wanted to focus on the task at hand,” Horan said. “We keep moving forward.”

Notes: Emily Sonnett replaced center back Tierna Davidson, who was sidelined after a knee-on-knee collision against Germany. … Coffey will miss the quarterfinal after receiving her second yellow card of the tournament. … Forward Jaedyn Shaw (leg) was unavailable for the third consecutive match. … Dunn left the match at halftime as part of Hayes’s plan to manage her minutes. … Washington Spirit rookie standout Croix Bethune made her Olympic debut late in the match.

“It was heartbreaking when we saw that look on her face,” Jim says.

The Huske family — like most everyone else — was barred from attending the Tokyo Olympics, as the world was in the final throes of the covid-19 pandemic. Those Games were held without fans, the athletes performing in empty stadiums and arenas in a made-for-TV Olympics.

The most tormented people during those Olympics may be the happiest at these. Parents of second-time Olympians who yearned to be with their children at the biggest moments of their athletic lives — to console them, celebrate with them, cheer for them, comfort them, hug them — now can do all those things while taking in the majesty of Paris and the sporting splendor of the Games.

“There’s only so much you can do when you’re FaceTiming and talking on the phone,” said Laura Woodhead, the mother of water polo player Dylan Woodhead, a first-time Olympian in Tokyo. “At one point, it kind of felt like a Netflix series. You’re watching this like, ‘I think he was here.’ It’s so much better in person.”

Huske and his wife were side-by-side this week in Paris La Defense Arena where Huske, now 21, won gold in the women’s 100-meter butterfly, the same race that brought so much pain in Tokyo.

“This is the exact opposite,” Huske said. “It’s the pinnacle … She’s still crying. But it was different. This was tears of joy.”

Just two games into the men’s water polo tournament, parents from the United States had formed a tradition. “Let’s meet at the french fry statue,” someone said after the first game. And so they all know to gather outside the Aquatics Center around the sculpture of curved, interlocking bars stretching into the sky.

Mimi Hooper mingled and made small talk in the dusty swelter Tuesday afternoon after her son, Johnny Hooper, and his U.S. teammates had beaten Romania. When players emerged down a dirt path, they all whooped and clapped. As they trickled into the crowd, Mimi spotted Johnny.

“Here’s my boy,” Mimi said. Johnny leaned down and wrapped his arms around his mother.

In team sports, parents missed two families in Tokyo. Traveling to tournaments bonds parents as much as players. Some of them met when their sons were 12. They know one another’s quirks.

Tuesday afternoon, Laura Woodhead clanged a cowbell, passed out horns and waved a flag emblazoned with Olympic rings and, “Allez Woodhead.” Mimi could barely speak. Laura tells her she’s the calmest parent there. Mimi said “terrified” is a better descriptor.

“I get nervous,” Mimi said. “I’m terrible. If I had a choice, I’d sit by myself.”

Traveling the world to watch their children compete at the highest level is not new. But the Olympics are different from global championships. Woodhead has ventured to three or four venues in a day, and some in her traveling party scored tickets to the men’s 100-meter final on the track.

“You get to see it all,” Laura said. “When you go to the world championships of water polo, you’re just watching water polo.”

The water polo is still the best part. When Dylan ambled past the french fry statue, he spotted a pack of high school friends who had made the trip and stood behind the American bench. “You guys were loud, bro!” Dylan said, exchanging daps and hugs. “I loved it!”

Dylan’s brother, Quinn, is in Paris as a first alternate, and his sister, Ella, was one of the last cuts for the women’s team. They can discuss strategy and how Dylan fits into the team. Laura just wanted to give him a hug.

“That’s my job,” Laura said.

After the Tokyo Games, Johnny Hooper went to work and considered leaving water polo behind. “Some people — including probably me — guilted him into it,” Mimi said, chuckling. “Like, ‘I didn’t get to go watch at the Olympics!’ He was like, ‘Okay, let me do one more time.’ ”

Some moments will remain missing, like blank pages in a book. Mimi was born in Japan, and her side of the family still lives there. She had planned to make Tokyo a transcontinental family celebration.

“My mom’s in her late 80s, and she thought this was going to be the last time she would see him in an Olympics,” Mimi said. “It was really hard. She lost that opportunity.”

No athlete reaches the Olympics alone. In the background are families who pour in time, money and support. They go to 7 a.m. swim meets and drive across the country to youth tournaments. They lift their children after disappointing losses so they can celebrate all the emotional wins.

Born in England, Terry Davison was a youth soccer coach in Inverness, Fla., when his sons became interested in rowing. “I didn’t know one end of the oar from the other,” he said with a laugh. But he turned a shack with a few broken down boats into a promising rowing club, coaching his sons in this foreign sport.

Ben Davison eventually qualified for the Tokyo Games with the U.S. men’s eight. His parents were crushed they couldn’t attend. They watched the Olympic competition from a watch party organized by USRowing at Universal Studies, saddened to see the U.S. boat finish in fourth place, just off the medal podium. Sarah Davison packed a care package that included a Benjamin Bunny children’s book they read together when Ben was younger.

“When they’re sad and your heart aches with them — I still love him the same no matter what,” said Sarah Davison, “ … Yeah, it hurts. It really does.”

The Davison booked their Paris travel plans long before Ben secured his Olympic spot. “Nonrefundable,” Terry said with a laugh. “I was sweating a bit on it. But you know, that’s it. I had my money on him.”

The American boat made it to Paris and will race in the men’s eight finals on Thursday at Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium, located 15 miles west of Paris.

“Try to tell Ben Davison that fourth in the Olympics is good. He’s not having it,” the father said. “He was upset. But we’re back.”

When Cindy Rusher was coming into town last week, she told her husband, “I want to slow down time for the next 10 days.” Their daughter Alie rowed for the U.S. team at the Tokyo Games, and their son Ben is now here competing in Paris.

“You realize it’s a moment in time,” Cindy said, “and it’s not necessarily always going to happen every four years. … I just I feel like I’m every day trying to appreciate everything that’s going on.”

They know better than most the enduring quality of an Olympic memory. Both Cindy and Jack rowed at the Summer Olympics in 1988 and ’92. At both, they had their own parents. Jack’s 81-year-old grandfather traveled to Seoul, even though he was in a wheelchair.

Alie is here supporting her brother, knowing his Olympic experience will be the inverse of hers in so many ways.

“We’ve had a few discussions and just wistfully wishing what could have been,” Jack said.

The whole family began making Paris plans a year ago. They hoped Alie or Ben would make the U.S. team. If not, they figured, they’d just do a family vacation. So there’s 12 of them sharing a house in Paris this week, experiencing a non-covid Olympics together, making up for lost memories wherever possible.

“Most of the athletes have big groups of fans,” Jack says, “because I think everyone has a pent-up desire to make up for what was missed in Tokyo.”

For the Robertses of Buchanan, Mich., BMX cycling always has been synonymous with family. They all pitched in at the bike park an extended family member owned the next town over, just across the border in Indiana. The arrangement was particularly sweet for Hannah, the youngest of the family’s four daughters.

“We all worked,” her mother Betty Roberts said. “She got to ride.”

Under blazing sun Tuesday afternoon, Betty and her husband, Rick, sat in Row 18 of the BMX stadium at Place de la Concorde, directly across from Olympic rings hanging above the freestyle course. The Eiffel Tower loomed to their right. Behind them sat Hannah’s three sisters, brother-in-law and two nephews. They watched as Hannah qualified for the medal round, trying to improve on her silver medal in Tokyo.

The family had watched back in Buchanan, surrounded by nearly 2,000 people at a watch party in town commons. NBC had set up a two-way video feed so Hannah and her parents could see one another during competition.

“It was not quite the same. At all,” Betty said. “Here, I can go down and I can see her. There, I couldn’t touch her. You couldn’t give her a hug.”

The distance was especially hard in Tokyo. Hannah broke her foot a month before the Tokyo Games. Betty is a nurse, and she desperately wished she could have helped. “You can’t be there,” Betty said. “You can’t encourage her, you can’t see what’s wrong.”

“The last Olympics, I was going to take my dad,” Rick said. “He was suffering from cancer. He lost his battle in between. That was in the head.”

Rick and Betty were there Tuesday as Hannah dropped in. There were no nerves, only excitement. “C’mon, show me a flair!” Rick said, referencing a 180 backflip Hannah had been the first woman to execute — at age 12. Rick thrust his fist in the air as Hannah finished a flawless run, a 91.80 score.

All of a sudden, the public address speakers bellowed, “Shoutout to Rick Roberts, who is the house!” Rick laughed and tipped his cap. Darryl Nau, the stadium announcer who has become a family friend over the years, had asked Roberts if her dad would be there.

The announcement was another reminder of what they had missed in Tokyo. The BMX circuit is a “very small family,” Rick said. They chatted with a Mongoose rep and said hello to old friends. Many professionals train or compete at the bike park near the Roberts’ home, and Betty hates to see them spend money on a hotel.

“All of these women have at one point stayed at our house,” Betty said, pointing to the course.

When the horn concluded Roberts’s second run, she stopped atop a box. Betty leaned forward and screamed, “Woo!” Rick rose with his full 6-foot-3 frame and raised his hands. Roberts would later say she never spotted her family, but somehow she tapped her heart with both hands and pointed directly at them.

“I wanted to wear a Hawaiian shirt so it’d be easier for Hannah to see us,” Rick said, playfully side-eyeing Betty. “But somebody wouldn’t let me.”

The Huske family watched their daughter swim in the Tokyo Games from their Arlington, Va., home, along with her coach Evan Stiles and a handful of friends. They’d traveled the world to watch her swim, and there was no way they were missing Paris.

They watched her race from the stands. The race was tight and Huske was trailing until the last couple of mighty strokes. Jim noticed first. “She did it!” he yelled to his wife. “She did it!”

After the medal ceremony, Huske made a beeline to her parents in the stands, falling into Ying’s arms. The two rocked side to side.

“Oh, my goodness,” Ying would later say. “That’s the moment that I’m so glad I didn’t miss.”

Let others take in the Louvre and Musée d’Orsay. The Huskes are spending each day at the Olympic pool as their daughter takes aim at even more medals, close enough to reach out and touch.

“It’s magic,” Jim said. “There’s no other way to say it. Magic.”

This could be an international incident?

Bowman is, of course, American — South Carolinian by birth, a Florida State swimmer in college. He rose to prominence as Michael Phelps’s coach long before the icon was iconic, back when he was a kid in Baltimore, and then through all 23 Olympic gold medals. Bowman served as the head coach for the U.S. swimming team as recently as last summer at the world championships in Fukuoka, Japan, and has been a fixture on American teams, as an assistant or head coach, for two decades.

But at these Paris Olympics, Bowman wears a shirt with a small shield and the word “France” over his heart. His official role is as an assistant coach to the French team. His main job is coaching French megastar Leon Marchand, who began his meet by winning gold in the men’s 400-meter individual medley, a performance in an absolutely delirious La Defense Arena that moved Bowman to tears — just as Phelps’s swims once did.

Phelps had owned the world record in that event since the 2008 Olympics, where he bagged a record seven gold medals. But Bowman is reveling in the idea that a Frenchman not only won gold in what many regard as swimming’s most torturous event — but that the same Frenchman snared the last of Phelps’s world records at last summer’s world championships.

“He’s the best in this event in history,” Bowman said, beaming.

The Olympics brand themselves as an opportunity for the world to come together. But when they do, they fight fiercely against the nations around them. The Games are mostly congenial. They’re also inherently jingoistic.

Take the Australian swimming team. The Dolphins, as they call themselves, embroiled themselves in patriotic controversy last week, before the torch was even lit. Seems one of their assistant coaches, a fella named Michael Palfrey, had the audacity to train a South Korean who reached the Olympics in the 400 IM. And when Palfrey arrived in Paris, he spoke with Korean television about his hopes for Kim Woo-min.

“I really hope he can win,” Palfrey said. He punctuated his remarks with, “Go Korea.”

This was, it seems, a traitorous act Down Under.

“Promoting an athlete who’s not Australian, it’s just … it’s not,” Australian head swimming coach Rohan Taylor said, searching for the right word. And then he found it.

“It’s un-Australian, to be honest,” Taylor said.

The Australian contingent talked about sending Palfrey home. It didn’t. Saturday, on the Olympic meet’s opening night, Kim won bronze — behind one Australian, Elijah Winnington, who took silver, but ahead of another Australian, Sam Short, who finished fourth.

“Very disappointed,” Taylor said. “So disappointed. For a coach on our team to promote another athlete ahead of our athletes is not acceptable. … He was taken to task on it and was very remorseful.”

This seems kind of silly. There are all sorts of examples across these Games — across any Olympics — in which citizens of one country coach athletes from another. The new coach of the U.S. women’s national soccer team is British. The coach of superstar gymnast Simone Biles, an American, is French. The head coach of the U.S. men’s swimming team was born in Trinidad and Tobago and won Olympic gold for Suriname.

The Paris Olympic slogan is “Ouvrons Grand les Jeux” — or “Games Wide Open.” Taken one way, we should be open to ideas from every corner of the globe, be that in culture or in coaching. Seems simple, right?

In swimming, it can be complicated. Which brings us back to Bowman.

The 59-year-old is forever linked to Phelps, whom he started coaching at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club before moving on — first to Michigan, where Phelps trained and attended classes and Bowman became the head coach, and then to Arizona State, where Phelps trained as a professional and Bowman basically built a national title-winning program from scratch.

To become a powerhouse in collegiate swimming, coaches have to recruit internationally. According to the NCAA, there are 223 swimmers at these Olympics who compete or competed at American colleges — 46 who swim for the United States, and 177 who represent 83 other countries. Siobhan Bernadette Haughey swam at Michigan — and has won three medals for her native Hong Kong, one here. Ireland’s Mona McSharry snagged a bronze in the 100 breaststroke here — three months after she posted two runner-up finishes at NCAA championships, swimming for Tennessee. You get the idea.

Frequently, those foreign swimmers remain with their college coaches, who often have second jobs training groups of professional swimmers alongside the kids. Florida swimming coach Anthony Nesty, the head men’s coach for the United States at the Olympics, is responsible for the Gators during the college season. But he’s perhaps better known because he trains gold medalists Katie Ledecky, Caeleb Dressel, Bobby Finke and other Olympians.

So, then, Bowman and Marchand. Three years ago, Marchand reached out to Bowman by email. He ended up at Arizona State, where he won 10 NCAA titles and helped the Sun Devils to the team championship this spring. (Bowman since has accepted the head coaching job at Texas, and Marchand is moving to train with him in Austin.)

But at last year’s world championships, Bowman’s loyalties appeared divided. He was wearing Team USA gear, but the first questions at his news conferences were about a French swimmer. U.S. swimming officials weren’t thrilled that their head coach was openly rooting for one of their competitors.

So by Bowman’s telling, he decided it was best if he recused himself from the American program — and instead coached Marchand, with the French team.

“It just makes it so much better for everyone for me to coach with the French because the French have no stipulations about me coaching other nationalities, and it’s a little different with the USA team, which I certainly respect,” Bowman told reporters when he made the announcement this spring. “So it just makes sense for everybody because I can coach everybody that I’m coaching now.”

That includes American backstroke star Regan Smith. It includes Hungarian Hubert Kos, last year’s world champion in the 200 back. And it includes Marchand — who will go for gold in both the 200 breaststroke and 200 butterfly Wednesday night. He is the swimming star here — and the reason Bowman’s flying a different flag.

“It’s been wonderful,” Bowman said. “The French people have been amazing, and it’s just been great to be a part of this and to be able to help Leon kind of fulfill my promise to him.”

Yeah, the Olympics are about patriotic pride. But they’re also about people and their relationship and commitment to each other. Bob Bowman isn’t committing treason. He’s helping the star of the host nation maximize his outsize potential. Turns out you can bleed two kinds of red, white and blue at once.

The gardens there are currently serving as a resplendent host to equestrian. Soon, modern pentathlon will marvel over the scenic hospitality of Versailles. The greatest competition at the Paris Olympics doesn’t involve athletes. The venues are fighting to steal scenes, turning French architecture into the pageant of all pageants.

“We were expecting something extraordinary, but not as much as this,” French eventing rider Nicolas Touzaint said after he first experienced the site and overall atmosphere at Versailles. “It’s quite incredible. I’m so impressed.”

Just about any athlete at any of the 15 venues could rejoice in similar fashion. The Olympics are known for stunning stadiums. Among the many are the Bird’s Nest during the 2008 Beijing Games, Olympiastadion during the 1972 Munich Games and Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 1932 and 1984. But in recent times, these structures have underscored the greed and excess of this costly event. Nations were duped into spending billions to construct buildings with short life spans. The eternal Panathenaic Stadium in Greece isn’t often the model in this gimme culture. Scams have no room for vision and sustainability.

With Olympic host cities now aiming to be smart and fiscally responsible, Paris has set a standard for stylish simplicity. It didn’t need a bunch of new structures to make an impression. For centuries, the city and region have been full of architectural jewels. To make a grand statement, the area just had to show off its natural beauty. There was one goal: Stay out of the way of perfection. If some Olympics have turned the host into a mere accessory, Paris is using the Games to accessorize itself. There’s more synergy here between event and location than at any of the seven Olympics I’ve attended.

“It’s really to honor our country in the most beautiful way,” said Tony Estanguet, president of Paris 2024 and a former French canoeist.

In the first few days here, I made sure to watch archery, beach volleyball, equestrian and fencing. I’ve never begun an Olympics with archery, beach volleyball, equestrian and fencing. That’s not a sports quartet of conversation starters, but there were greater rewards.

Esplanade des Invalides is the stage for archery, as well as the marathon finish and portions of cycling events. The tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte is nearby. Louis XIV commissioned the Hotel des Invalides to be built in the late 17th century as a hospital and retirement home for war veterans.

And the fencing competition is at the Grand Palais, the most stunning indoor venue of all, a 124-year-old cathedral that Chanel often uses during Fashion Week. It’s a massive palace of iron and steel, with a mesmerizing glass roof. Before every match, the competitors march down a daunting staircase, looking like royalty descending to greet the masses at a party, before dueling in the nave.

On Sunday afternoon, I watched tennis at the iconic Roland Garros for the first time, but by nighttime, the Grand Palais made me almost forget about it. There is no ugly backdrop at these Olympics. Everywhere, you gaze in disbelief that sweaty competition can look so artistic.

“Most places you go to watch sports, you have to do both — watch your games and go be a tourist,” said Tara McRae, who’s visiting from Australia. “There’s no separation here. I’m amazed wherever I go.”

French fencer Auriane Mallo-Breton won a silver medal in women’s épée before the home crowd. After every point she scored, fans stomped on the bleachers, creating a rumble that made it seem as though the crowd was about to vault toward the high glass ceiling. The atmosphere managed to be electric and stately.

“To live it myself and to experience it in front of a crowd that had been behind me all day, it was incredible,” Mallo-Breton said.

The Olympics don’t feel as transactional here. It’s not just up to the athletes to bring money-pit buildings to life. The word “Olympic stage” is used a lot to talk about what it means to compete in this environment, but let’s be honest: At most Olympics, it’s just a television soundstage made special because athletes fight with all they have to make it to the podium. Put the Olympic rings anywhere, and it feels like a spectacle. But this time, there is character to pair with the stakes.

Only the most provincial natives can’t feed off this energy. Some locals are annoyed that the Games have overtaken nearly every wonderful view in Paris. But to Estanguet, the temporary inconvenience is worth the chance to celebrate the city.

“We can’t do it without some disruption,” Estanguet said. “We can’t do it without some restrictions. We tried to anticipate these restrictions, and we communicated them a long time in advance.”

Although the final tab isn’t known, Paris 2024 has indicated it may get through this with one of the most cost-effective Olympics in a long time. According to multiple reports, the organizers may avoid exceeding $10 billion in expenses. In 2012, the London Games cost nearly twice as much. In 2016, the Rio de Janeiro Games exceeded $13 billion. Organizers of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, forced to move to 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic, were thrilled to announce they came in at just less than $14 billion.

By leaning into its timeless architecture, Paris had just three major construction bills: a $1.6 billion Olympic Village, a $190 million Aquatics Centre and a $150 million venue for gymnastics and badminton. Those are still mind-boggling financial commitments to attract the Olympics and Paralympics for essentially a month. But it’s an improvement. And it’s an inspiration for future Games to think further about cost-saving measures.

Still, there’s only one Paris, where art and sport can coexist so seamlessly. There are more venues to see here, more opportunities for jaws to descend. For future Olympics, the bar is higher than the Grand Palais ceiling.

Gymnasts on narrow beams, helmeted kids skimming in skate parks — those are hazardous pursuits, sure. But at least the wood and concrete don’t rise up and chase you, seeking to slam you down on razor reef teeming with life and rake you over it like a meat slicer. Going into the final rounds, Teahupo’o already had injured two surfers, and that was in small conditions, with a larger swell scheduled to build. Australian Jack Robinson took five stitches in his foot merely in training. The injury didn’t prevent Robinson from eliminating American John John Florence in a heavyweight Round 3 heat amid building surf that inflicted early wipeouts on both. Frenchwoman Johanne Defay suffered a head wound in a heat Saturday that required four stitches.

“It’s a cheese grater,” legendary big wave surfer Laird Hamilton said by phone from his home in Malibu, Calif. “You fall, you’re going to shred yourself.”

Be sure of this: If larger waves do come in for the quarterfinals, a lot of surfers will fall. “If it’s severe, it’s going to take out most of the field,” Hamilton predicted.

Teahupo’o is the most philosophically interesting competition at the Paris Games, and not just for the question of whether it’s right to impose a judge’s tower on surfing or to build it on a shimmering coral reef. The place seems sacred. There is something about the teeming energy in that wave that resolves into such a smooth glassy cylinder. It restores the sense of power to that word, sacred, reminds you that it means something about true dominion.

“It’s the most perfect wave in the world and the most frightening and wicked in the world,” Morocco’s Ramzi Boukhiam has said. “She has two faces. You see it from the outside, you look at it from the boat, you’re like, ‘Wow, it’s magnificent.’ But when you’re inside, you fall, poof, it’s less magnificent.”

Back in 2000, Hamilton stunned the world by catching a ride at Teahupo’o that is now known as the “Millennium Wave.” A photo on the cover of Surfer magazine captured it, a murderous ledge of water hanging over Hamilton’s head with the caption, “oh my god …” The photo effectively opened Teahupo’o, formerly ridden only by a handful of locals and elite pros, to the world. “It changed people’s perspective of what’s rideable,” Hamilton said. The sensation of all that green-blue majestic energy was so profound that afterward, Hamilton wept.

“It’s not so much the vastness of the wave,” Hamilton told me a few years ago about why he chases such seemingly unrideable masses. “It’s more about the insignificance of us. When you become insignificant is when you truly begin to participate. That’s when it becomes a harmonious act.”

Peruvian surfer Sol Aguirre had a similar reaction when she took off on a wave in training. Initially she felt fear, but then it resolved into that beautiful translucent tunnel and a cloud of white spray. “I started crying because it was a really beautiful ride, and I managed to make it through,” she said, according to the official website of the Games. “You make it out, and it’s like: ‘I’m alive. I’m living it.’”

A harmonious act. That’s what Teahupo’o really requires to bless riders. There’s no making the wave submit. Water is 800 times denser than air. Saltwater weighs 64 pounds per cubic foot. Combine that heaviness with the peculiar oceanography of Teahupo’o, and it creates a unique hydraulic problem: The wave is a cylinder of centrifugal reversion. It sucks water from the base of the shoals steeply and powerfully up its face — and will take you with it. Choose a line too high, and the backspin of the water will grab your board and gyrate you up and over the falls. Even a small whack from that heavy lip can do a certain amount of damage: A year ago during a training camp, New Zealander Saffi Vette got a little forward on her board, and the lip broke right on the back of her leg. The blow was so heavy it tore her medial collateral ligament.

But if you survive the initial plunge — the suck, the angle, the velocity — it’s heavenly. “That wave, because of how quickly it rises up, you have to get in early and get yourself set to take the drop, the descent, and then pull up into it,” Hamilton said. “It’s all about the start. If you got a good start, then you’ve got a good chance, and it can lead to a more dramatic ride. If somebody is doing it correctly, there will be an ease to it that is deceptive for the difficulty.”

Ease, harmony — that’s what the competitors seem to feel when they catch the break right. The best ones, those who medal, will exhibit a sense of collaboration with all that effervescence. If Teahupo’o gets large, watch the Tahitians in the round of 16, Kauli Vaast on the men’s side and Vahiné Fierro on the women’s. They are most familiar with it, have a regular acquaintance with the outermost brink of things there.

Why does Teahupo’o provoke such powerful emotions from surfers? Perhaps it’s partly a physical response, a release from tension. Surfing is an experience of full body intensities. The transfer of all that metabolic high energy excites neuronal signals. We’re all creatures of light and electricity as well as tissue — inside us is a swarm of fireflies. The triggered chemical-emotional reactions that come with stress produce a heightened clarity, an “alertness” Hamilton said, “and we’re meant to experience that.”

Teahupo’o is a challenge, even on its easiest day. There is no beating it. You don’t defeat the ocean coming home to those cliffs. You just cooperate with it — until it lets you go.

Summer McIntosh, the newly minted gold medalist, had a lot of constituencies to visit.

There was her family — mom, dad, sister — in the corner nearest the medal stand, and within seconds of the ending of “O Canada,” which McIntosh sang while toggling between English and French, the way she learned in grammar school, she headed straight for them. What followed was a four-way hug that started as a tidy square but soon collapsed into a nebulous blob of trembling limbs and teary faces.

“I know they would have been proud of me, no matter what,” McIntosh said. “But to be able to give them a big group hug was pretty cool.”

There were her Team Canada teammates and other supporters, who handed her the iconic red-and-white maple leaf flag that the 17-year-old phenom draped around her slender shoulders for the rest of her victory lap. “It’s Summer Time in Canada” read a handmade sign held by one of them.

There were her coaches, one Canadian, one Floridian, both of whom had a hand in her rise from a precocious kid whose first love was figure skating into a young woman who just became, if she wasn’t already, the consensus best all-around female swimmer in the world.

And there were her teammates from the Sarasota Sharks, the Florida club team where McIntosh and her mom decamped two years ago to escape Canada’s stricter covid restrictions and put the finishing touches on the training that, this week in Paris, already has her in possession of one gold and one silver, with three events still to come.

What McIntosh did Monday night, in obliterating the field in her signature event, could not have surprised any of those who knew her. It’s simply what she does. But anyone in the building unfamiliar with her exploits would have been left in awe.

Her time of 4 minutes 27.71 seconds failed to lower her world record from May — though she flirted with it in the first half — but it was good enough for a blowout win over Americans Katie Grimes (4:33.40) and Emma Weyant (4:34.93). It was the largest margin of victory in the event since Tracy Caulkins won by more than nine seconds in Los Angeles in 1984.

“Incredible to see,” Canadian teammate Kylie Masse said. “She’s an inspiration to everyone.”

In fact, the most unimpressed person on the premises may have been McIntosh herself, who never lost her composure in the pool, on the medal stand or in her brief visit with the media.

To hear her tell it, there was not a shred of relief in meeting the massive expectations that had been placed on her in this race; she entered with more sub-4:30 swims (six) than the rest of the field combined (zero). To hear her tell it, she already had moved on in her mind to the 200 butterfly, her next event.

“Absolutely not,” she shot back when asked whether there was relief mixed with her joy. “There’s definitely a lot of anticipation going into the race, but I wouldn’t say there are necessarily nerves. There’s no relief. I’m really just trying to soak up every moment I have at the Games … because obviously these moments only come around every four years.”

To Brent Arckey, McIntosh’s coach in Sarasota, her preternatural composure is no accident. They talk frequently about handling the pressure and the chaos of an Olympics. He has put her through media training to the point she can parry a tough question like a fencer. She may be 17, but having been through one Olympics in Tokyo at 14, then having won four world championships in the intervening three years, she’s already something of an international veteran.

“She’s great in this environment,” he said, “and I’m just proud how that’s progressed and how she’s learned to manage all this. … She knows when to turn it on, turn it off, be a kid and be a champion.”

Though no one was catching McIntosh, the American duo of Grimes and Weyant dueled each other, as well as Britain’s Freya Constance Colbert (fourth place, 4:35.67), to earn the right to flank McIntosh on the medal stand. Grimes, 18, held second place the entire race, pushing McIntosh in the front half before fading back, while Weyant had to come back from fifth at the 200-meter mark to will her way to a bronze.

Along with Ryan Murphy’s bronze in the men’s 100 backstroke and Luke Hobson’s bronze in the men’s 200 freestyle, it gave the United States a second straight four-medal night. A third of the way through this nine-day meet, the Americans lead their rivals from Australia on the overall medal table 11-6, though the Aussies have the advantage in golds 3-2. On Monday night, Aussies Mollie O’Callaghan and Ariarne Titmus went gold-silver in the women’s 200 freestyle.

The night, though, belonged to McIntosh — and, by extension, to Canada, which is a rare thing to say at an Olympic swimming pool. McIntosh’s gold was just the 10th in the program’s history. Sprinter Penny Oleksiak is the country’s most decorated Olympic swimmer, amassing seven medals total but only one gold. Alex Baumann and George Hodgson top the list of gold medal winners with two each, but neither won any additional medals.

In other words, with a massive meet in Paris — she already had a silver from Saturday’s 400 free — McIntosh could immediately vault herself into the discussion of the greatest Canadian swimmers of all time. Still to come for her: the 200 IM, the 200 fly and the 4×200 free relay.

Much of the world may be focused on the U.S.-Australia rivalry at this meet or on French sensation Leon Marchand, who blitzed the field in Sunday night’s 400 IM the same way McIntosh did. There will be three more Katie Ledecky events, with the freestyle legend taking aim at some massive chunks of history.

But in Canada, and in a corner of the Florida Gulf Coast, these Olympics are quickly becoming known as the Summer Games.