The Sports Report Olympics edition: Simone Biles proves she’s the G.O.A.T.

Welcome to your daily Olympic newsletter. I’m John Cherwa, your tour guide, as Simone Biles showed us why she is the G.O.A.T. of women’s gymnastics.

So, is it better to win a bronze medal in somewhat of a surprise or win the gold medal in an event you were expected to dominate? Oh, who cares. On Tuesday, the United Sates convincingly won the team gold in women’s gymnasts despite some bobbles, bad steps and a fall.

The U.S. is the only country to win a medal in the women’s and men’s competition, which, we guess, makes the U.S. the best gymnastics country in the world. We’ll see how things stand after individual competition.

Simone Biles remained the driving force in U.S. gymnastics with her solid, at times excellent, performance. The U.S. women have won three of the last four golds in team competition. Italy got the silver and Brazil took the bronze.

We have lots of coverage from our Thuc Nhi Nguyen. Look here.

(Note to NBC: The in-rotation scores when not everyone has the same number of competition scores is misleading, and, well, worthless. We can wait until after the rotation is over to see the standings.)

Here are some other high and low points from Tuesday’s competition.

—The U.S. picked up four medals in swimming Tuesday, but none of them gold. In fact, the U.S. has 15 swimming medals but only two gold. Regan Smith and Katherine Berkoff earned silver and bronze in the women’s 100-meter backstroke; Bobby Finke took silver in the 800 freestyle and the U.S. was second to Britain in the men’s 800 freestyle relay.

—The U.S. men’s soccer team qualified for the quarterfinals for the first time in 24 years when it beat Guinea 3-0 in group play. It will play Morocco on Friday.

—The defending Olympic women’s champion U.S. lost to Germany 17-13 in its first pool play game in the 3-on-3 basketball tournament. Serbia beat the U.S. men, 22-14.

Members of the United States rugby sevens team pose with their bronze medals.

(Vadim Ghirda / Associated Press)

—The U.S. picked up its first ever rugby sevens medal when the women’s team upset 2016 champion Australia 12-7 in the bronze-medal game. New Zealand beat Canada for the gold 19-12. Our Kevin Baxter can tell you about it here.

—The water quality in the Seine River was such that the men’s triathlon has been moved to Wednesday, the same day as the women’s triathlon. Officials spent about $1.5 billion to clean up the Seine to make it usable for competition. Hope there isn’t a no-refund policy.

Coco Gauff returns a shot during her third-round match Tuesday.

(Andy Wong / Associated Press)

—Coco Gauff can’t seem to get a call at Roland Garros tennis stadium. She was eliminated by Donna Vekic of Croatia 7-6, 6-2. Gauff disputed, to no avail, a chair umpire’s decision much the way she did in the French Open about a month ago. She lost that decision too.

Five moments of the Games

I’ve done more Olympics than Methuselah had high school reunions. (That 200^th was a humdinger.) And one thing I know about the Games is there are usually five major events that define each one.

Trying to predict the five at this point is like trying to predict the presidential election a year ago, or even a month ago. But, with so many days to go, here’s what we know.

Guaranteed for one of the spots is Simone Biles, regardless of what she does in the individual events. The rest of the spots are in flux. In contention would be the dominance of the French, how poorly the U.S. is doing in gold medals and the opening ceremony. Sorry, but the U.S. men’s gymnastics team winning the bronze probably is a one- or two-day story soon to be in the rear-view mirror.

We’ll check back in later.

Extortion or blackmail?

You don’t get to write this very often, but the U.S. Congress is in agreement on something that the IOC was out of bounds asking the Salt Lake City Organizing Committee to oppose its own government and lobby against its investigation of the World Anti-Doping agency.

On Tuesday, Congress gave the IOC one of its digits by proposing legislation that would keep funding from WADA if it doesn’t do its job better. That comes to about $3 million-plus a year that could be withheld from WADA.

“That sort of blackmail and bullying is exactly the problem that we’re trying to get at,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md) said.

We hate to quibble with the gentleman from Maryland but last week we referred to this IOC plot as extortion. Not really knowing the difference, we contacted uncredited co-author Mr. Google, who explained that it is, indeed, more like extortion than blackmail. Check it out here.

What’s wrong with Hoda?

We had planned to chronicle the number of times that NBC’s Hoda Kotb threw away any semblance of journalistic ethics and hugged members of the U.S. Olympic team. No doubt her enthusiasm is infectious but as a “journalist” there are some lines you don’t cross. She broke out of the gate strong with six hugs — five full frontal and one side — in two days before breaking for the weekend.

But since then she has only one hug in 11 athletes interviewed and even that hug might have been initiated by skateboarder Nyjah Huston. We’ll still count it though.

Is it possible she figured out that Lester Holt doesn’t hug Kamala Harris and Donald Trump or was she told to tone it down? The real test will be when the U.S. women’s gymnastics team is on “Today” today.

If I could turn back time

In our item about the order of the individual medley, we said it was the slowest to fastest after the backstroke. In fact, the breaststroke is slower than the butterfly. But the order in team IM is butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle.

What to watch today

There are 26 sports competing today with 18 gold medals to be awarded.

—There are five medal races at swimming Wednesday. The U.S.’s best chance for a gold is the women’s 1,500 freestyle with Katie Ledecky. Other finals are the women’s 100 freestyle, men’s 200 butterfly, men’s 200 breaststroke and men’s 100 freestyle. It starts about 11:30 a.m. PDT.

—The men’s all-around in gymnastics will also be held at 8:30 a.m. PDT. Don’t expect the U.S. to medal.

Must-read links

Let’s catch up on some stories you might have missed, but shouldn’t have:

• Paris Olympics TV schedule: Wednesday’s listings
  
• 2024 Paris Olympics: How to watch every event and the opening ceremony
• Right place, right time: The story behind the viral surfing photo from the Paris Olympics
• ‘We just made history.’ U.S. women’s rugby sevens revel in bronze-medal showing
• Olympics once again buzzing with fans and crowds in first post-COVID Games
• Colin Jost, non-Olympian, hurts his foot in Tahiti while covering 2024 Olympics surfing
• Simone Biles leads dominant U.S. to gold in Olympic gymnastics team competition

• Jordan Chiles adds secret ingredients of fire and fun to gold-medal U.S. gymnastics team

Your TV guide

How can you watch the Games today? Check out Wednesday’s Olympic TV listings.