Photos of the GOAT: Simone Biles and the ladies of USA Gymnastics!

The stars were out the other night, and they were all in the gymnastics arena to see one person.

I heard that Tom Cruise was in the building and looked up and saw him in the crowd. Then I panned the lens around the VIP section and saw John Legend and his wife, Chrissy Teigen were there too. Then upon further inspection in the camera I saw that Nick Jonas was there too. I am not well versed in the star community, so I am sure there are others that you might see that I missed.

Tom Cruise got up and mingled with the very excited crowd! He signed autographs and was the subject of  endless selfies.

And Ariana Grande was sitting below all of them.

But there was no bigger star of the evening than Simone Biles!

I got to the venue an hour early assuming that other photographers would be bunching up in the photo area by the balance beam (where USA started the rotation) preparing for Simone and the others to perform. Thank goodness I got there when I did, because there were way more photogs there than I expected, but I got a good spot. All the gymnasts seemed calm and ready to compete. 

Jordan Chiles was the first to go...

... and she was awesome!

As I have said many times before, our job is to capture the action AND the reaction, and I love this reaction!

She was so fired up.

Hezley Rivera was up next...

This is by far my favorite event in gymnastics, as I think it provides the best images.

I usually crop to show the beam in the photo, but since she had such height, I thought I would crop in tighter for this one.

I was using the Canon R1 at 40fps to make sure I got the absolute peak of their jumps. And like I said on a previous blog post, I decided to lighten my load and take the Canon RF 70-200mm lens with me for this morning.

Suni Lee went third and also performed amazing jumps like this one. Wow!

She dismounted and there was a weird silence in the crowd. Every photographer, and everyone in the crowd, was anticipating the next athlete.

Simone walked over and chalked the beam...

...and then blew off the excess chalk. I felt like this was part of the story and deserved a couple of photos. :)

And then the moment arrived...

Simone launched herself onto the beam.

I was concentrating so hard on framing her correctly, zooming in and out at the right times, to get in close, but not cut off her hands and legs on the jumps!

I took more than 600 images during the short performance, looking for great jumping shots, but also pretty ones like this.

The big dismount.

And complete elation!

At this point, even though Jade was up next, I jammed to the best location to photograph the floor exercise, knowing that this would get crowded within seconds.

I picked a location where I thought I could get the best photos of the ladies in front of the Paris 2024 logos.

And this time I was able to get photos of Jade Carey since she went before Simone on the floor exercise. 

Look at the height that Simone got here. Crazy!

I like the simplicity of this shot, with Simone framed with the logos and rings.

Then came her big finale...

...and more smiles.

I took photos of the vault, but honestly, even though I know the difficulty of this, I felt the images did not look as good. Each of the athletes make funny faces as they concentrate on their landing.

As the athletes made their rotation to each discipline, all of us photographers did the rotation with them.

Many of you spotted me on your televisions and sent me photos of your screens. Yep - that is me smack dab in the middle. Thanks for sending these. I guess that bald spot is easy to spot!

The last part of the rotation was the uneven bars. In the past I have had a hard time photographing this, as the athletes move up, down, forward, backward and it is hard to track them and keep them in focus. But with the new Canon R1, almost every photo was tack sharp. I was VERY happy with my images.

Look at the clarity in the eyes!

Another big dismount (right into the lights - ugh).

Simone sticks the landing...

...and lights up the venue with that big smile once again.

I had to jam from this venue back to the water polo venue to photograph the next match. But I was really happy knowing that I got to photograph Simone once again, and this time in happier circumstances vs Tokyo.

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